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T H E 



RUIN OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, 



Reports of the Covode and other Committees. 



The Missouri compact was a parole of honor 
given by the. slave States to obtain an exten- 
sion of the limits of the slave institution beyond 
those originally assigned to it by the ordinan ■•.. 
of 178? — the hpa\» arlnj-.tprl Koforo and under 
the Constitution. The boundaries first and 
last established were meant to confine that 
fatal disease to all free institutions in a sort of 
quarantine, to prevent its spread, so that the 
sanitary principles, the growth of the Revolu- 
tion, embodied in the Constitution of the con- 
federated Republic, might gradually work out 
its eradication. 

The violation of that compromise was a re- 
pudiation of the good faith which had marked all 
previous mutual arrangements among the States 
of the Confederacy. It renounced the honest 
patriotism which was the cement of the Gov- 
ernment, with the design of supplanting it by 
those mercenary, self-arrogating principles, out 
of which combinations grow, establishiug the 
rule of the few over the many. 

This great change in the morale of the Dem- 
ocratic party was effected by Mr. Calhoun, who 
contrived to make slavery its most influential 
element, while he reversed its direction. Mr. 
Jefferson's impulse gave a tendency towards a 
gradual deliverance of the country from slavery, 
as threatening the overthrow of all its free in- 
stitutions — as pregnant with insurrections, civil 
war, and ruin of republican government. Mr. 
Calhoun controverts Jefferson's principles — de- 
nounces as "folly and delusion'" his belief, once 
almost universal in the South, that "slavery 
was a fapral awl j'olitical evil" — and asserts, 
" it *b the most safe and stable basis for free 
in.it itui i ..•-- {n the world." 

This new doctrine Mr. Calhonn has inculca- 
ted successfully on those owning both the soil 
and slaves in the South. The high prices of 
the staples whetting avarice, and the monop- 
oly of wealth, thus created, rousing the political 
ambition in a sectional oligarchy arrogant in 
controlling all the slave States by combination, 
has resolved all the politics of that region into 
Mr. Calhoun's one absorbing idea — the enslave- 
ment of tho laboring masses, as essential to 



their power and the safety of the governing 
class. The octroi of the National Govern- 
ment for many years has opened up new pros- 
pects to them in conquests abroad, as conse- 
quent on the triumph ot Hi. :. j ropKot'a prinri- 
ples, and, like the followers of Mahomet, they 
make the propagation of slavery a part of their 
morale or religion, as well as the basis of what 
they call free institutions. It is politic in them 
to assume that to be true democracy which 
transfers the sovereignty of the nation to a 
combination of slaveholders, and slaveholding 
to be moral, as performing a duty to God. 

Long-indulged selfishness, looking through 
tho distorted eyes of intense avarice and ambi- 
tion, will not bear the sight of anything repug- 
nant to its enjoyments. The political rights of 
citizens, as well as the natural rights of man, 
have no toleration from those who hold power 
and are educated as oppressors. The lash, the 
torture, the domestic prison-house, the horrible 
piracy of the slave trade, conjoined with fili- 
bustering upon feeble neighboring Republics, 
to immolate and drive one tribe of victims from 
their homes, to cram them with multitudes of a 
still more helpless race, must all conspire to 
maintain the slavery-extension system, crown 
it with conquests, and make it flourish as a 
growing empire, like that of the early Sultans. 

Mr. Calhoun's insane ambition has inspired 
his maddened followers to look towards this 
sort of glory. He was certainly a man of auda- 
cious intellect. He found our great Western 
Republic under tho full headway of the revo- 
lutionary forces impelling our free institutions, 
" on the full tide of successful experiment." The 
land of the free was inscribed on its flag. He 
had the hardihood, on getting command at the 
helm, to reverse the machinery, and dash back- 
ward on the danger from which we had es- 
caped ; and he hoisted the black flag, when all 
civilized nations had declared themselves its 
enemy. Our country has felt a revulsion on 
being thrown back in its course, but it will not 
suffer from the shock more than the giant ship, 
the Great Eastern, from a sudden reverse of its 
engines. It will soon resume its easy forward 



PUBLISHED BY THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE. PRICK $1.60 PER HUNDRED. 



movement, under the direction of that power, 
the popular will, which the interest and intelli- 
gence of all contribute to enforce and make 
authoritative. 

No man was more highly gifted than Mr. 
Calhoun to disturb the regular action of free 
government. His mind was a sort of perpetual 
motion, driving skilfully, and always against 
the natural tendency of the masses. At one 
time, his ambition addressed itself to command 
the influence of the wealthy classes of the 
North. It was then he employed the pen of 
his friend, Mr. McDuffie, to give his high-toned 
aristocratic doctrine in his essays, signed " One 
of the People." Then he was for a bank and 
high protective tariff. Then, through the in- 
fluence and on the motion of Mr. McDuffie, the 
Legislature passed its self-denying ordinance, 
declaring, that although protective duties were 
mischievous to the South, yet,. as they promoted 
the general welfare in creating manufactures, 
its patriotism would bear the local burden. 
The North did not rown.nl tbia dishuerested- 
ness by making Mr. Calhoun President, and 
then suddenly the tariff was denounced by him 
and his friends as a flagrant breach of the 
Constitution, and Mr. Preston put forth the 
nullification manifesto, a paper prepared by Mr. 
Calhoun with the most elaborate skill. Then 
followed the rally of the Southern delegations 
in Congress at the Jefferson birthday dinner, 
1830, to band them together for secession, when 
President Jackson, who was invited to counte- 
nance it, covered the conspirators with dismay 
by the stern rebuke, which silenced the hilarity 
of the table, " The Federal Union, it must 

BE PRESERVED." 

Next came the nullification ordinance of 
South Carolina, closely followed up by the 
proclamation and the force bill of Gen. Jack- 
son, from which Mr. Calhoun and his chiefs 
escaped, deserting their military array, and 
surrendering to Mr. Clay. They submitted to 
Mr. Clay's scheme of a tariff, as a salvo for the 
Constitution and their pride, though more ob- 
noxious to the principle they asserted than 
that they proposed to resist by arms. 

This terminated the war against the Union 
on the pretext of the tariff; but Mr. Calhoun 
kept up his war upon the Jackson administra- 
tion under the banners of the Bank, while in- 
sidiously preparing a more extensive combina- 
tion to broach secession on the part of the 
South by creating alarm for the safety of its 
filave institution. No serious alarm could be 
produced •, and although the irritating discus- 
sions between the nullifiers and abolitionits in 
Congress resulted in exciting bad feeling on ! 
the part of the slave towards the free States, 
no apprehension of aggression from the latter 
could even be dissembled sufficiently to coun- 
tenance another secession attempt. Mr. Cal 
houn then changed his tactics, and looked to 
aggression on the part of the South, stimulated 
by the ambition of extending the power of its 



1 

institution, at the risk of collision and a breach 
between the States. His design was assisted 
by the defeat of Mr. Van Buren, the death of 
Gen. Harrison, and the accession of Mr. Tyler 
to the Presidency. Tyler was (me of the ear- 
liest proselytes to nullification, and was classed 
by Col. Benton among " Calhoun's Mormons." 
On becoming Premier in Tyler's Administra- 
tion, Calhoun became, dejuctn, President, and 
made conquests for slavery the main purpose 
of the Administration. 

To produce combinations in favor of this 
policy at home, his first step was to provoke 
hostility to it abroad. He hunted up from the 
files of the State Department an old letter of 
Lord Aberdeen, saying something deprecating 
the perpetuation of slavery, and he responded 
by proclaiming the purpose of annexing Texas, 
to give a fresh impetus to the march of slave- 
ry. He addressed another letter to our Minis- 
ter to France, (Mr. King, of Alabama,) avow- 
ing the same design, to extort from that Power 
some expression of repugnance to what he 
knew its policy condemned. He then pushed 
his treaty of Texan annexation into the Son- 
ate, where it was rejected. Next, he made 
annexation, by a bare resolution of Congress, 
the subject of violent controversy in both 
Houses, threatening disruption, and carried 
it, after it was on the eve of defeat, by inducing 
Mr. Polk, the President elect, to practice a 
fraud on Benton and his friends, who had vo- 
ted down the treaty, and meant to vote down 
the resolution. The trick was thus compassed. 
Polk pledged himself, that if Benton's [dan of 
annexing Texas on certain conditions guard- 
ing against the dangers of Calhoun's scheme 
were added as an alternative to the latter, in 
the execution of it, by the incoming President, 
Benton's would be adopted and carried out. 
The annexation was voted in this alternative 
form, and Polk, who on the next day was 
sworn in as President, violated his solemn 
pledges, without a pretence of denial, and gave 
effect to Calhoun The absolute sub- 

serviency of Mr. Polk to Mr. Calhoun's policy 
had been secured in advance of his elec- 
tion. 

By broaching suddenly the extension of sla- 
very as a test question iu the nominating Con- 
vention of the Democracy. 1 8 1 1 ; (the delegates 
to which had been almost universally instruct- 
ed to vote for Mr. Van Buren.) the Southern 
members were combined, to exact a pledge 
from him to annex Texas with that \\orr. Mr. 
Van Buren declined, iu a letter, to adopt the 
course prescribed, or to annex Texas without 
reachinir it through diplomacy. This answer 
accomplished Mr. Calhoun's design agsinBl 
him, embodied the whole Southern delegation 
in opposition; and this rendering his election 
impossible, the body appointed to nominate 
him, v : wed. Looking to this result, Mr. Cal- 
houn, u- ih • head of Tyler's Administration, 
had convoked a Convention gotten up by his 



office-holders in the different States, to meet at 
Baltimore on the same day with the Demo- 
cratic Convention. While, therefore, Mr. Pick- 
ens and others of Mr. Calhoun's South Caro- 
lina friends attended the latter, laying their 
credentials on the table, to vote, if necessary, 
the Tyler Convention nominated him for re- 
election, with a view to control the nomination 
of the Democracy. If it nomiuated any man 
hostile to Texas and slavery extension, the 
Democratic Southern delegates were ready to 
declare against him, and go for Tyler, making 
a Democratic defeat inevitable. In this state 
of thiugs, Polk, who had declared himself for an- 
nexation, supplanted Van Buren ; and Calhoun, 
holding Tyler as his automaton candidate in 
hand, was enabled to make his own bargain 
with Polk, who was given to understand, that 
Tyler, who would receive the vote of Calhoun's 
party in the South, and transfer several States 
to the Whigs, would decline in his favor, if he 
would commit himself, secretly, to Mr. Cat 
houn's whole eckemo of elavery extension. 
Polk yielded ; and it was expressly but confi- 
dentially stipulated by him, with Mr. Pickens, 
that he (Polk) would disarm the organ estab- 
lished by General Jackson to maintain his 
policy, and set up one favorable to Mr. Cal- 
houn's designs, which thenceforward became 
common to both. The consequences began 
immediately to reveal themselves. Tyler re- 
signed, in i; Lvor of Polk. In advance of the 
election, he furtively withdrew fifty thousand 
dollars from the Treasury, and put it at the 
disposal of prominent personages, who were in 
the schema, to provide a new organ. Mr. Bu- 
chanan, who was in the secret, wrote a letter 
to Mr. Bibb, (Mr. Calhoun's accomplice for 
years, and through his influence made Secre- 
tary of the Treasury,] recommending the agent 
who received the money. Mr. Polk's perfidy 
to Colonel Benton in violating the pledge to 
adopt his mode of annexing Texas, providing 
preliminary conditions, was the first public 
signal of revolt from the Democracy, and ad- 
hesion to the iiulufiers. The next was his re- 
fusal to appoint Flagg to the Treasury, (to 
which he had pledged himself to General Jack- 
son,) followed by the induction of Walker, to 
devote its resources to the extension of slavery. 
Then the withdrawal from Mr. Butler, of New 
York, the overture he had made of the War 
Department, as soon as he declared his willing- 
ness to accept it, giving the place to Marcy, 
the opponent of Van Buren and Wright, to 
whose support he owed the Presidency. Soon 
after this i .ime the repudiation of the Globe, 
the installation of Ritchie, with Hunter, Mason, 
and all the reBt of Tyler's and Calhoun's Vir- 
ginia junto, drawing after them all who had 
given evidence of alienation from the Democ- 
racy during the Jackson and Van Buren ad- 
ministrations. In the North, the same confi- 
dence in malcontents prevailed. In Massa- 
chusetts, ttie Greens, of the Fost, and Cushiug, 



of Tyler corporal's guard, ruled the hour. In 
New York, the Hunkers. In Pennsylvania, 
Buchanan, as Premier in the Cabinet, stamp- 
ed his sinister and oblique look on all the aims 
of the party. In Missouri, Atchison, who ob- 
tained his seat in the Senate from the favor of 
Benton, was made his enemy and rival by the 
Administration. Yet Polk was reduced to ask 
Benton's aid to deliver them from the " master- 
ly inactivity " into which Calhoun's policy had 
brought their military operations in Mexico. 

They tendered him the Lieutenant General- 
ship, on the adoption of his plan of carrying on 
the war, to the city of Mexico, and yet conclu- 
ded by betraying him and defeating the bill for 
his appointment in the Senate. Then the Ad- 
ministration contrived that coalition between its 
own Democratic partisans, the nullifiers, under 
Atchison, and the Whigs, under Mr. Geyer, 
(elected Senator,) which sacrificed him at 
home. Cass and McLane, who had brooded 
over the disaffection in the Jackson Cabinet on 
the removal of the deposits, who had assisted 
in the bank panic, and who aided the con- 
spiracy to bring on the revulsion which over- 
threw the Democratic successor of Jackson, 
were made representative men of the new De- 
mocracy installed by Calhoun, Tyler, and Polk, 
after those who had rebuilt that of Jefferson, 
under Jackson, were ostracised. And certain- 
ly no better exemplars of the policy which was 
to control north of Mason and Dixon's line 
could have been found than Cass and McLane. 
They were the high priests of that mysterious 
influence which breeds doughfaces — a tribe 
fattening on the spoils of Government, and 
propagating that fear of change through which 
many well-meaning men are often subjected to 
the despotism of the most depraved. 

The effect of the system, by which that of 
Jackson, handed down by the revolutionary 
stock, was superseded, is before us. The ex- 
tension of slavery into. Texas only whetted the 
ambition of the Southern oligarchs for the con- 
quest of Mexico. The war was made, which 
Mr. Calhoun's policy would have rendered term- 
inable only by a military subjugation reducing 
the mass of the population to the condition of 
vassalage. That was the meaning of his " mas- 
terly inactivity," which proposed simply a mil- 
itary occupation commanding the country. 
Col. Benton's plan brought the war to a close, 
securing to the people of the portion of Mexico, 
purchased at the cost of fifteen millions to ex- 
tend our boundaries to the Pacific, the full en- 
joyment of their own local laws, under which 
the slave system was abrogated. This turned 
the war of the nullifiers on our own Govern- 
ment. They resolved, if California came in as 
a free State, the slave States would go out of 
the Union. General Taylor, who made the 
conquests, and succeeded Polk as President, 
(the latter being justly repudiated by all par- 
ties,) was prepared to veto the compromise of 
1850, which recognised the right of converting 



any portion of the free territory acquired of Mex- 
j. (into slave territory. Fillmore, the Northern 
Vice President, coming iuto power on the death 
of Taylor, seeking a norubiation from the South, 
sarreudere*d the position taken by his princi- 
pal, and open'ed the way to slavery iuto the 
free Mexican territories annexed to ours. He' 
sunk under his submission, and President 
Pierce succeeded, solemnly pledging himself 
to maintain the limitations imposed by the va- 
rious compromises against the extension of 
slavery. Another term in the Presidency, only 
to be Loped for by sacrificing his honor to the 
6lave {States, was an irresistible bribe to his 
poor ambition. Affected fear of a dissolution 
oi' the Union was the mask of dough under 
which he covered his treachery, and he entered 
the race with Douglas, and endeavored to out- 
ruu him in concessions to secure the Southern 
phalanx. The Missouri compromise was re- 
pealed, and the whole system designed by the 
fathers of the Republic to resist the progress 
of slavery, and make deliverance at some time 
possible, was pulled down. 

The political alarmists communicated their 
panic to the Supreme Court, and the venerable 
incumbents, apprehending that secession might 
slip their benches from under them, concluded 
to make them fast by reversing all former de- 
cisions, and considering all ordinances, all 
laws which treated slavery as a State institu- 
tion depending on local laws, as mistakes of 
uuenlightened generations, and entered up a 
decree to plant it on the Constitution of the 
United States. Fortified in that citadel by the 
judgment of the tribunal of the last resort, no 
law of Congress, of State or Territory, can dis- 
turb it. it goes wherever the Constitution, the 
supreme law, goes. Mr. Buchanan on coming 
to the Presidency took a step beyond all his 
predecessors, and the Supreme Court. He at- 
tempted to drag Kansas as a State into the 
Union with a slave Constitution, against the 
consent ot its people, employing military force, 
fraud, and corruption, to accomplish it, and 
having failed, has contrived to exclude the 
State from the right to come into the Union, 
accorded to all others under similar circum- 
stances. Why are not those who wield all the 
powers of the Federal Government so abso~ 
lately, satisfied with their triumph? Is it that 
a sense of wrong is ever attended with an ap- 
prehension of redress? 

And what has this unsatisfactory ineffectual 
effort to build up a system hostile to that es- 
tablished by the fathers of the Government 
cost the country in its moral and material in- 
terests ? 

Mr. Sherman, chairman of the Committee 
of "Ways and Means, submitted to the House a 
statement showing the growth of the expenses 
and population at every census, and rate of 
tax for each inhabitant. This, compared with 
the increase during the present Administration, 
shows that at the outset, 1792, our population 



being in round numbers four millions, the tax 
per head was fifty cents ; in 1830, (General 
Jackson's term,) in a population of about 
thirteen millions, the tax was $1.03 ; in 1840, 
(Mr. Van Buren's term,) the population being 
about seventeen millions, the tax was $1.41. 
Now, (in Mr. Buchanan's time, 1858,) the in- 
habitants estimated at twenty-eight millions, the 
rate of tax is $3 per head. By the increase of 
inhabitants, a little more than three-fold at the 
Jackson period, the tax was only doubled. 
At the Van Buren period, the inhabitants 
being increased six-fold, the tax falls short ten 
cents of being tripled. On the population, 
estimated as increased seven-fold in 1858, the 
increase of tax from the actual expenditure of 
1857 shows an increase of tax of thirty-six- 
fold for each person. Now, this enormous in- 
crease in the rate of expenditure, compared 
with that shown to mark its progress, with that 
of the population from the beginning up to the 
close of Van Buren's Administration, argues 
the operation of some cause more potent than 
the inclination of the head of the Government 
towards extravagance and corruption. It ar- 
gues that some prevailing passion or principle 
influenced a powerful party in the country to 
protect a responsible Executive in such an 
abandonment of the economy which custom 
had established, (under a succession of Ad- 
ministrations and parties in the Republic,) and 
which had concurred in making frugal expend- 
iture a test of a faithful attention to the inter- 
ests of the people. Nowhere was this test so 
severely applied as in the slave States, where 
taxation by the Federal Government had be- 
come peculiarly obnoxious, because levied by 
a tariff which, it was insisted, oppressed the 
South, while it protected the North. 

The extraordinary increase of taxation and 
expenditure, out of proportion to the increase 
of population, becomes the more extraordinary, 
therefore, when it is considered that all the Ad- 
ministrations under which it has grown up 
were installed and controlled absolutely by the 
embodied power of the parsimonious South. 
This paradox, however, is easy of solution. 
The negro mania, which Mr. Calhoun's inap- 
peasable ambition laid hold of, as operating on 
the whole nervous system of the slave States, 
was excited every way to combine them as a 
whole, and bring all their energies to advance 
his schemes. The gigautic strides of the North 
to power in wealth and population was pointed 
at, to alarm ; its repugnance to slavery, to pro- 
voke ; its progress in arts, literature, commerce, 
and manufactures, to create envy; and all to 
excite sectional ambition. To gratify it and 
his own, Mr. Calbouu proposed to band all 
their strength to add new empire for slavery. 
War, to extend the area of slavery, became 
the watchword in the South ; and the appli- 
cation of the wealth of the North to such a 
cause, no matter how profusely, was true econ- 
omy for the South. The military service of 



Van Buren's terra was raised by the Florida 
war, from $'21,000,000, its test in the preceding 
term, to $47,000,000. This was to capture 
slaves, and drive out the Seminoles, to make a 
new slave State. As this State was withiu the 
then existing boundary of slavery, this expendi- 
ture could not be held to be one enlarging the 
area of slavery ; yet it is fair to ascribe to the 
necessities of that institution the encumbering 
of Mr. Van Buren's Administration with an ad- 
ditional $7,000,000 annually during his term. 
It was, however, on the accession of Mr. Cal- 
houu to power under Tyler, that the system 
was organized — devotiug the treasures of the 
nation to Southern policy, and making a slave 
empire to encroach on free territory, and swal- 
low the Gulf and the tropics. The annexation of 
Texas was the first step; the war with Mexico 
to extend the boundary of Texas, the next. 
The naval and military service for the four 
years of Polk's term amounted to $123,048,599. 
Fifteen (15) millions were then paid to Mexico 
for the region acquired by the sword. Teu 
(10) millions more were paid to Texas, for the 
pretended claim oho asserted over New Mexi- 
co, which, though assented to by Northern 
men, doubtless to disentangle it from Texas 
and slavery, now boasts a slave code, through 
the influence of the civil and military power 
of the Federal Administration over that prov- 
ince. Then followed the G xdsden treaty, pro- 
viding $20,000,000 for Arizona— cut down in 
the Senate to $10,000,000, lest the enormity of 
the amount should burst the Senate's prison- 
house, and let out the corruptions divulged in 
secret session which procured the arrangement, 
and lead to new corruptions. The desert, or 
arid zone, which was looked to in the first 
treaty as a barrier to separate the nations, 
was acquired to draw the contemplated Pacific 
railroad within the boundaries of Mexico, and 
facilitate the ultimate appropriation of the 
whole country. It would require a volume to 
present in detail the waste of the slavery prop- 
agandist policy, begun under Tyler, and pur- 
Bued under Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, and Bu- 
chanan. 

In the progress of it, a Congress of our for- 
eign ministers issued the Ostend Manifesto, 
threatening war with Spain unless she would 
take some hundreds of millions for Cuba. This 
shows the spirit of the movement; and the 
actual growth of the national expenditures 
under its influence, from Mr. Van Buren's time 
forward, exhibited in figures, proves how 
steadily and rapidly it has worked. The ex- 
penditure of our Administrations, from Wash- 
ington to Van Buren inclusive, making about 
half a century, according to Secretary Cobb's 
report of February, 1858, amounts to 
$621,262,856.53. The aggregate expenditure 
under Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, and 
Buchanan, (up to 1857,) is $692,385,792.38. 
To this add, predicated on Mr. Cobb's own 
estimates, the one hundred and thirty mil 



lions for the two last years of Mr. Buchanan's 
term, and we have, for twenty years of the 
slave propagandist administration of the Treas- 
ury, an outlay of $822,385,792.38, to con- 
trast with $621,262,856.53, for the half cen- 
tury of expenditure under all previous Presi- 
dents. 9 

But it is not the foreign war waged to spread 
our peculiar institution which costs most, 
costly as military movements always are. The 
policy which requires corruption to enlist the 
great body of a reluctant nation to secure its 
adoption, is still more expensive. In fact, it 
costs more to recruit a party for slavery in the 
North than an army. The last two years of 
Mr. Buchanan's Administration cost more 
than the four years of Mr. Madison, when in- 
volved in the conflict with Great Britain, and 
when war was blazing on the land, the lakes, 
and ocean. 

Mr. Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury, in " the 
Statement of Expenditures from 178'J to June 
'M)th, 1857," called for by Congress, exhibits 
the expenditure of the last four years of Mr. 
Madison's Administration, including the war 
with Great Britain, to be $108,537,080.88. 
And in the same statement, the past two 
years of the present Administration show an 
expenditure of $125,366,396.21. So one 
year of peace under Mr. Buchanan cost more 
than two years of war under Madison — 
a war waged with the greatest military and 
naval Power of the earth, and closed in the 
triumph of our arms. But a scrutiny of the 
motives and the results of the vast expendi- 
ture involved in Mr. Buchanan's policy will 
make the contrast between himself and the 
illustrious President he so bitterly denounced, 
while maintaining the conflict with Great 
Britain, the more striking. 

The very first measures of our ultra Southern 
President and Cabinet on reaching power, and 
without awaiting the meeting of the Congress 
chosen by the people to form a part of the 
Government during his term, was to march an 
army on Kausas, under pretence of quelling a 
rebellion in Utah. 

This is the modest account given by the 
President of war measures, begun without 
consulting Congress, raising our military ex- 
penditures to a higher point than during the 
war with Great Britain : 

" The people of Utah, almost exclusively, belong to this 
church ; and believing with a fanatical Bnuil to it lie 
ernor of the Territory by divine appointment, the] obey Ins 
commands as if those were direct revel il 
If, therefore, he chooses that his G*v«rnm ml shall 
into collision with the Government ol thi 
members of the Mormon church will ylel I 
to his will. Unfortimat.'lv, existing la ' htUe 

doubt that such is his determination. Will 
uponaminute history of o 

that all the officers of the Unitod SI il ' 

tlve with the Single exceptions ol two Indian 
found it necessary tor their per 
from the Territory ; and there no 

eminent in. Utah buHhodeepoUsnioTB g This 

beiug tuo condition of aflairs in the Territory, 1 could aoj, 



mistake the path of duty. As Chief Magistrate, I was bormd 
t5 restore the supremacy of the Constitution and laws within 
its limits. In >rder to effect this purpose, I appointed a new 
6o" L r i r ana other Federal officers for Utah, and sent 
with them a military force for their protection, and to aid 
as a posse cvmUatus in caso of need in the execution of the 
laws." 

"A posse comitatus to introduce Governor 
CuLuuiings to Governor Brigham Young." 
"What proof had the President that Young, 
who was appointed and held as Governor and 
Indian agent under the commission of his 
predecessor, would not recognise a commission 
from him appointing a successor? He did 
not afford Young the opportunity of repulsing 
his authority, as he did not assert that authority 
by sending a Governor to supersede him, nor 
did he take a step to inquire into the charges 
made against Young by Judge Drummond, on 
which the latter resigned — charges which 
Young denied, begged might be investigated, 
and which have since been disproved. The 
army was marched in hot haste to inaugurate 
Governor Cummings. The war is thus opened 
by General Scott in person : 

"CIRCULAR. 
" Headquarters of the Army, May 28, 1857. 
" T.) the Adjutant General, Quartermaster General, Commis- 
sary General, Surgeon General, Paymaster General, and 
Chief of Ordnance: 

" Orders having been dispatched in haste for the assem- 
blage of a body of troops at Fort Leavenworth, to march 
thence to Utah as soon as assembled, the General-in-chief, 
in concert with the War Department, issues the following 
instructions : [Here follow the details of the forces, amount- 
ing to -',600 men, and all the equipments.] 

[Signed] " WLNTIELD SCOTT." 

General Harney, who had gathered the main 
force at Fort Leavenworth, receives the follow- 
ing laconic order from 

" Headquarters, New York, June 29, 1857. 
" The Fifth Infantry is ordered to proceed immediately to 
join you, from Jefferson Barracks, as soon as it and the 
body of Tenth arrive. Proceed to your destination without 
unnecessary delay." 

On the next day, another letter from the 
General-in-chief tells Gen. Harney that gen- 
eral orders " have indicated your assignment 
to the command of an expedition to the Utah 
Territory ; " and adds : 

" The community, and in part the civil Government of 
Utah Territory, are in a state of substantial rebellion against 
the laws and authority of the United States — a new civil 
Government is about to be designated, and to be charged 
with the establishment of law and order. Your able and 1 
energetic aid, with thatof the troops under your command, 
is rc.ied upon, to insure the success of his mission." 

Now, with all this hurry of regiments, "dis- 
patched in haste, for the assemblage of a 
body of troops at Fort Leavenworth, to march | 

THENCE TO UTAH AS SOON AS ASSEMBLED, there 

to crush rebellion against the laws and Gov- 
ernment of the United States," nothing was 
accomplished for a year. 

The array brought together in thirty days 
from remote quarters of the country, and ready 
to march in June, 1857, could only present it- 
self and the Governor (about to be designa- 
ted) to Brigham Young in June, 1858. Du- 
ring the summer, fall, and winter of 1857, 
Young was in the regular discharge of his ! 



functions, under the orders of the Department 
at Washington, and, as Indian agent, in cor- 
respondence with Mr. Denver, Commissioner 
of Indian Affairs. Indeed, the rebellion charged 
upon him was founded upon acts imputed as 
having occurred under the Administration of 
Mr. Buchanan's predecessors, and no* thought 
worthy of investigation by them, nor by Mr. Bu- 
chanan himself, although invited by Governor 
Young. The truth is, the gathering of troops in 
such haste at Leavenworth, in Kansas, in June, 
1857, was to frown down the Topeka Legisla- 
ture, elected by a majority of the people of the 
State, who, imitating the example of other Ter- 
ritories, and taking the popular-sovereignty 
principle of the Kansas-Nebraska act for au- 
thority, had formed a Constitution for submis- 
sion to Congress, and elected a Legislature to 
give it effect. The next object of the intro- 
duction of the army into Kansas was to coun- 
tenance, the election of a Convention elected 
by the pro-slavery minority, to annul this Consti- 
tution made by the majority, and set up an- 
other. It was proposed by the Administration 
to submit this pro-alavery Constitution to the 
votes of the people, and doubtless it hoped, 
with aid of the votes of the soldiery, and the 
control brought with the army in contracts and 
disbursements, in frauds, bribery, and over- 
awing at the polls, that the slave Constitution 
could be carried ; and, at the worst, if the 
people should rise in resistance, the army 
could begin with rebellion in Kansas, and put 
it down preliminary to that in Utah. 

Governor Walker, sworn as a witness before 
the Covode Committee, makes apparent the 
motives which stayed for a year, in Kansas, 
the troops under Harney, although under or- 
ders of the General-in-chief to march immedi- 
ately on Utah. Mr. Walker's testimony re- 
veals the secret that the tactics of the Admin- 
istration now had changed : 

" This attempt to make Kansas a slave State developed 
itself in the fall of 1S57. It first was fully developed by the 
terrible forgeries in the pretended returns — they were not 
legal returns — that were sent to me as Governor of the 
Territory , and which I rejected, although that rejection gave 
a majority of the Territorial Legislature to my political op- 
ponents, the Republicans, at which, I am free to say, I was 
deeply grieved. I did my best to secure a Democratic ma- 
jority in that Legislature, and exerted m3"self most anxious- 
ly, making stump speeches, &c. The first forgery presented 
to me was the case at Oxford, which was a forgery upon its 
face ; and that it was so, has since been acknowledged by 
one of the judges whoso name purported to be signed to it. 
In a public document, since published by him, he declares 
that he never did affix his signature to it. In Oxford, mora 
than sixteen hundred votes were attempted to be given in a 
village of six houses, where there were not fifty voters ; 
and it is now ascertained that not thirty votes were really 
given ; the rest were all forgeries, lly rejection of that 
return, inasmuch as it affected the two large counties of 
Johnson and Douglas, gave a majority of the Territorial Leg- 
islature to the Republicans. 

" I was then very bitterly denounced, at which I felt pro- 
foundly indifferent, because I thought that any man who 
would approve or endorse such forgeries was a base and 
dishonest man, and I preferred his censure to his approval. 
Various personal threats were made, which I also disre- 
garded 

" The next return presented was that from McGee county, 
where there c •: t t;nly were not twenty voters, but which 
was returned as over twelve hundred votos, given at throe 



different precincts, and where it is now ascertained there 
was bo election holden at all — not a voto given in the county. 
These pretended returns were also rejected by me; and at 
longth it was fully developed that, contrary to all the pledges 
given, especially by Calhouu himself, the President of the 
Convention, that they would submit the Constitution to the 
vote of tin- people, another course was resolved upon. 

" Finailv, a lew days Before the vote was taken upon the 
subject, Mr. Ca.houn,the President of tho Convention, called 
upon me, and s ibmitted substantially the programme as to 
slavery which was subsequently adopted by the Conven- 
tion, and asked my concurrence. He presented various 
prospects ofthe highest place from the people of this Union 
Ff I would concur, and assured me that that was the pro- 
gramme ofthe Administration. I said that that was h 
sible. and showed Mr. Calhoun this letter of Mr. Buchanan 
to me, ofthe 12tb or July, 1857. lie said that tho Adminis- 
tration had changed its policy." 

The fact stated by Calhoun to Gov. Walker 
is showu to be true by the concurrent testimony 
of Secretary Cobb, Secretary Thompson, and 
Martin, clerk of the Interior Department. Mar- 
tin was sent out, to attend the birth of the Le- 
comptou Constitution. Each of these witnesses 
labored hard to conceal the truth. All three lay 
great stress on the prominent circumstance 
that each was urgent, as was the President, 
for the submission of the Constitution at one 
time, which they knew to be slave; but they 
try to wink out of sight the important point, 
that they suddenly changed their plan when 
they found their schemes for carrying it by a 
vote ofthe people would fail. They then con- 
trived a clause to perpetuate the slavery which 
already existed in 'Kansas; aud then they pro- 
vided, by another clause, that no vote should 
be given against the Constitution itself, con- 
taining this provision, but that the suffrages 
should be written on ballots, thus— "For the 
Constitution' witu slavery," or, " For the 
Constitution without slavery ; " and Mr. 
Walker says, " those who opposed the Consti- 
tution were not permitted to vote at all." Now, 
as all were obliged to vote for the Constitution, 
with its clause declaring that the slavery ex- 
isting there should be perpetuated, and that the 
words " without slavery " were to be construed 
as a vote against new importations of slaves, it 
simply amounted to a provision that Kansas 
should be a slave State, to be stocked with 
slaves, either by unchecked emigration, or by 
the slower process of propagation from the 
considerable number of slaves already there. 
The original plan ofthe Administration was to 
to have the State Convention make the Consti- 
tution slave out and out, aud so have it voted 
by the army votes at the polls, or votes under 
the army duresse, or votes influenced by the 
money in the hands of multitudes of con- 
tractors and agents, whose spoil was five mil- 
lions from the Treasury. On all these failing, 
the Administration's prime agent, Calhoun, (a 
name now ominous for slavery,) was prepared 
with the triek which carried slavery in the Con- 
stitution, by the manner in which the ballots 
were required to be inscribed. 

The Lecompton Convention, which met in 
June, adjourned to meet again on the 19th of 
October. The regular election of the Territorial 
Legislature was held about this time, and the 



Calhoun Convention adjourned, so as to have 
the returns before deciding on the mode of 
submitting the Constitution to the people. 
The fraudulent returns created an Adminis- 
tration Legislature, which would put the 
local authority so completely in the hands ot 
Calhoun as to enable it to carry the slavery 
Constitution without difficulty, if submitted 
through officials such a Legislature would con- 
stitute. The forgery that carried the Legisla- 
ture would carry the Constitution. Under 
these circumstances, Calhoun, representing 
the President, and Martin, who was sent by 
Thompson and Cobb, were about to have the 
Constitution undergo this ; But josl 

at this moment, Gov. Walker declared the 
legislative returns in favor of the President 
fraudulent, and the Republican majority duly 
elected. And here was the turning point. The 
programme of the President, of which Calhoun 
assured Walker he was duly advised, instantly 
changed. Martin, the cautious Cabinel n rent| 
gives this account ofthe sudden change of tho 
lirst plan of cheating into that last adopted : 

"A difficulty sprung up between G ivernor Walker 
a portion of the Convention, within a day or two after it r- 
assembled", and it Snally extended CD a majoi ,•>■ ol the Con 
venlion, which really, In my' judgment, defeated the sub- 
mission of tho Constitution In its entlretj to) te people 

"ft arose ahont'certiOoates of election ol mi min-raof tho 
Territorial Legislature from Douglas and Johi ion conn Uee. 
it was alleged that frauds had been comtp tted at Oxford. 
and threats of personal violence were made by Lane and 
bis adherents against Walker and Stanton, If tliey should 
give certificates to the Democrats claiming to bo e 
from those counties, who had the certificate s or the judges 
of tho election. Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton 
published a card announcing that they had taken, or would 
proceed to take, testimony in tho case, and If it should ap- 
pear that fraud had been committed, certificates of election 
should be awarded to lb.' Republicans; whereupon a HUM" 
ilamus was issued by Judge Cat", at theinsl inceol the Dem- 
ocrats claiming to have been elected from those counties, 
for the purpose of enforcing their right to certificates of elec- 
tion, and thus devolve on the Legislature, the judge of the 
elections Of its own members, the Investigation of the ques- 
tion of frauds at Oxford. Governor Walker declined a com- 
pliance with the mandate of Judge Cato, and awarded cer- 
tiorates of electiou to the Republicans. Thereupon some ol 
the extreme anti-submission members of the Convention, 
with the friends of the thus defeated Democratic candidal) s 
for the Legislature, called a meeting to dene ince thfl course 
of Governor Walker in this matter, and it was held in tho 
hall of tho Convention, though at night after the Convention 
had adjourned. They denounced him in totter speeches, 
and passed resolutions ot censure upon lus conduct, without 
identifying themselves with or endorsing the frauds, if any 
had been practiced; taking the ground that Governor 
Walker and Secretary Stanton wore not judges ol the oloc- 
tipn.and had no authority of law lor going behind the re- 
turns of the judges to Inqarle Into th • quest) f fraud in 

lion of members, but, if frnr.ds had been practiced, 
it was a question for the Legislature to Bottle. That made a 
breach between the Governor and a large portion of the 
Convention, which I labored in vain to prevent, and after- 
wards to heal." 

This confession being extracted from the 
Cabinet emissary, Mr. Olin, ofthe Covode Com- 
mittee, then inquires of him : " Do you know 
who was the author of that provision ? (the sla- 
very provision in the Lecompton Constitu- 
tion?") Mr. Emissary answers, "I think I 
drew it myself.'' Mr. Olin again asks: " Who 
consulted you about drawing it up?" Answer : 
" Gene al Calhoun, Rush Elmore, and Hugh 
' M. Moore ; I do not know whether any others ; 



8 



we had been associated together upon the out 
and out plan of submission ; and that Laving 
failed, the question was, what was best to be 
done now," &c, &c. 

Now, it will be remembered that Calhoun, 
President of the Convention, was the President's 
representative, who first told Governor Walker 
ef the change at the White House in regard to 
the submission of the Constitution, after it was 
found that the fraudulent Legislature to pass 
upon it was unseated. And Moore, Vice Pres- 
ident, was the man to whom the Cabinet em- 
issary bore his letter of credit from Cobb. 
These were the managers of the packed Con- 
vention, and through whom it was worked like 
a supple-jack, by the telegraphic wires from 
Washington city. 

Governor Walker deserves credit for turning 
his back on the whole body at Lecompton en- 
gaged in giving effect to the chicanery of the 
President. He opeus up the view to both plans 
in the passage already quoted, in which he says 
that this plan to make Kansas a slave State 
developed itself in the fall of 1857, and he fixes 
precisely the same moment and the same cause 
for the Administration's change of front as to 
the mode of effecting the object, as does the 
Cabinet emissary. It was when he declared the 
returns counterfeit, that made an Administra- 
tion Legislature to accomplish its designs and 
that way to success was closed. That Calhoun, 
the manager of the grand fraud, was the ac- 
complice of the President in it, is put beyond 
all doubt by the fact that he was sustained in 
every movement he made by the President, 
while they were in progress. That he was sus- 
tained by him in the fraud of getting up the 
Convention, and countenancing it when elected 
by two thousand votes — the most of them prob- 
ablyfraudulent — and known to be overbalanced 
by more than ten thousand against it. That 
he favored both plans, the first and the last 
urged through Calhoun in that Convention, to 
impose the slave institution upon a reluctant 
people. That he sustained the bribery, the 
violence, the forgery, and perjury, through 
which Calhoun endeavored to procure a sub- 
servient Territorial Legislature, is manifest 
from the fact that he sustained the Lecompton 
Constitution, the result of all these villianies, 
recieved Calhoun with honor at Washington 
when driven from Kansas in disgrace, and 
gave him another office of trust when he dare 
not return to resume that which he had aban- 
doned. 

Governor Walker sustained Calhoun in all 
his enormities but the last; and that being the 
one. necessary to accomplish all the rest, the 
President turned him adrift, because he w(fnld 
not obey his representative, Calhoun, instead 
of the written instructions under his own hand. 
Although Governor Walker deserves credit for 
this defiance, there are others who deserve 
credit for helping im to the resolution. 
Two thousand nilitia of Kansas were em- 



bodied and in arms, and had determined not to 
allow their State to be made the victim of 
Southern interest or ambition. These men 
would have set up their own free-State Consti- 
tution, voted by the great body of the people, 
against the Lecompton slave Constitution, the 
spawn of the vilest prostitution of popular rights. 
They had ouly postponed taking preliminary 
steps under their free Constitution, as Govern- 
or Walker tells the President, under the assur 
ances he had given that they should have a 
fair vote to decide the fate of that to be pre- 
pared by their pro-slavery adversaries. The 
Governor goes on to say, in his letter to the 
President, " their Legislature would certainly 
have passed a complete code of laws, and could 
have put them in practical operation by the 
popular will in a large majority of the counties 
of the Territory, and they will do the same 
thing next fall, if the Constitution is not sub- 
mitted to the people. This of course is all 
wrong ; but it would have been done, and would 
have united all the free-State Democrats with 
the Republicans, and rendered a bloody col- 
lision and a tedious and sanguinary civil war 
inevitable, requiring the active services of 
troops in a large majority of our counties cer- 
tain." And it was this certainty that they 
would do the same thing next fall, if not treated 
fairly, which induced Governor Walker to close 
his letter to the President by this impressive 
warning : " It will never do to send General 
Harney to Utah until the difficulties in Kansas 
are settled. He is a terror to the Black Re- 
publicans, and just the man for the occasion." 
This shows why, under pretence of flying to 
Utah, there was such hot haste to assemble the 
troops to be in June at Leavenworth, to cover 
Calhoun's election of a pro-slavery Convention ; 
why such timely notice was given that they 
should be detained there to help the Adminis- 
tration in electing the Territorial Legislature 
by being " a terror to the Black Republican " 
voters, and afterwards the shield to protect the 
unhallowed attempt to make them swallow the 
Lecompton programme in the fall. The Pres- 
ident in his private letter of July 12, 1857, ex- 
torted by the Covode Committee from Walker, 
answers thus : 

" General Harney has been selected to command the ex- 
pedition to Utah, but we must continue to have him with 
you," 

[This is as it was taken down from Walker's 
reading to the Committee. The National In- 
telligencer, which probably obtained a copy 
from Walker himself, has it, " Contrive to liave 
him with yo?<."] 

" at least until you are out of the woods. Kansas is vastly 
more important, at tho present moment, than Utab. The 
pressure continues upon me without intermission. I pray 
that Divine Providence, in which I place my trust, may 
graciously preserve my life and health until the end of my 
term ; but God's holy will bo dono in any event. 

" With every sentiment of esteem, I remain always sin. 
COTOly your friend, JAMES BUCHANAN." 

This prayer, altogether for himself, when 
poor Walker was not " out of the woods," but 



9 



in the midst of its dangers, looks rather selfish 
m the man win ...put him there. Bat the great- 
est sinner has the greatest nee 1 . 1 , of prayers, and 
the man needed them most who had meditated 
and matured a policy to overthrow the principle 
on which American liberty is founded, a pol- 
icy which the friend he had placed in the post 
of danger declared was leading to "a disastrous 
revolution, a nil civil war,ichich would undoubted- 
ly have extended to the bordering States of Iowa 
and Missouri, and which I think would have 
extended throughout the Union.''' The bloody 
collision betweeu the troops and the people 
embodied to defeat the frauds which had put 
down their right of suffrage, and put up a 
false Legislature, was arrested by Governor 
Walker; and President Buchanan was obliged 
to bring his Lecorapton bantling, disavowed by 
four-filths of the voters at the polls, and hooted 
by the local Legislature, into Congress for 
adoption. Its fate in Congress is well known. 
All the Administration could do, by corruption 
and by party drill over its organized majority 
in both branches, could not avail. It, was re- 
jected for bastardy by a portion of the Demo- 
crats and by all the Republicans in Congress. 

Then the Administration produced the Eng- 
lish bill to keep Kansas out of the Union, and 
out of the Presidential election, the old public 
functionary believing that his last chance for 
n -election would be in the House of Represent- 
atives, through division of the electoral vote, and 
there Kansas, if admitted, would count as much 
against him as the Empire State. The Le- 
compton Constitution had been lost by twenty- 
four Democrats uniting with the Republicans 
in the vote against it. The recovery of more 
than half these Administration recusants was 
necessary to cover the President's retreat into 
this English bulwark against Kansas. The 
English bill was the measure through which 
the President hoped to escape the odium in the 
South of introducing Kansas as a free State du- 
ring his first term, a thing likely to extinguish 
the support he knew to be essential to bring 
hi in forward for a second. He therefore, as 
will be seen from the testimony before the 
CoVode Committee, exerted his influence 
through corrupt agents to operate on the mem- 
bers of his party who deserted him on the Le- 
compton biil, to bring them back on the Eng- 
lish bill. 

In passing the English bill, he found an 
agent, in Cornelius Wendell, more sagacious 
and effective and not more scrupulous than he 
had found in General Calhoun, the President 
of the Convention charged with the Locompton 
measure. 

Wendell's management, as exhibited by him- 
self on oath before the Covode Committee, de- 
serves to b(: studied by the country. It passes 
before the eve in a sort of camera obscura, the 
operation pt the Executive machinery on Con- 
gress under high pressure, and directed by a 
skilful engineer. The morals of the Adminis- 
tratis n as well as its politics, as presented in 



these behind-the-enrtain scenes, will be found 

full of admonition. Wendell was a printer, and 
seems to have studied his profession as a black 
art, rather than one to spread light. He was 

indoctrinated in fraud by the Democracy of the 
lower Empire, which he introduced at Wash- 
ington, on a larger scale than ever known be- 
fore, as the system of log-rolling and bribery in 
Congress. With unabashed frankness, an 1 .-ume- 
thing of pride of achievement, he describes his 
mode of managing Congress; observing a 
delicacy in regard to the exposure of individ- 
uals whom he seduced, that wears au air of gal- 
lantry. 

He was liberal, too. His bank accounts, 
examined by the Committee, show a vast ex- 
penditure. They coul 1 a da how it 
was applied, because, as Wendell deposed, he 
had "entered them on his book intentionally 
in such a way that he was not able to explain 
them." Headds: M Idi I them ae much 

I COald, not only with regard to the pari 
but as to the entire facts. I have a distinct 
impression that the money I paid for services 
rendered in the pa mg ■ of that bill (the 
lish bill) exceed thiuty thousand DOLLJ 
The chairman interrupted him. (See page 
216.) Question: "1 believe you stated, in 
your former testimony, that, during the pend- 
ency of the Lecompton or English bill, you 
had very frequent conversations with the Pres- 
ident and the members of the Cabinet, and 
that they did not give you any express or pos- 
itive directions relative to the using of money 
to carry the bill ; was not the impression made 
on your mind, in those interviews, from all that 
took place between you and them, that, if you 
did use your money, you would be cared for 
and reimbursed in (jovernment patronage? 
Was not that impression made on your mind 
from all the interviews between the President, 
members of the Cabinet, and yourself?" An- 
swer : " Yes, sir. The general idea left on my 
mind was, that if I exerted myself in favor of 
the passage of that bill, I would be properly 
considered thenceforward during the term of 
the Administration." 

Mr. Wendell, in subjecting the members 
fixed on to the views of the Administration, did 
not offer direct bribes to them himself. He 
selected influential agents in their own States 
to operate on them. In Uhio, where there 
were several whose defection on the Lecomp- 
ton fraud was to be cured by corruption, a Mr. 
Bean, an editor of influence in some of their 
districts, was selected. Wendell took him in 
baud, and Bean's testimony thus shows the 
result : 

"Question. What conversation had y odeO 

at the tim»<be propoeod togivoyou $jn,ooo? 

" Answer, that g I • 

my Joking and plaguing him . ho pn i ■ >ed, ii 1 u 

t!i^ i- intract, t<> give mo ;'. 

which he mado and handed i" mo i I mc, .>r .lu- 
ring tliv first conversation. I <; i n< m rcm< mix rwl 

was. In place of telling It, li" wrote a down, wh ■■ 
looking on. Says Ik 'Hen what I « then 

wrote this : ' Ud . $6-80 , $5-00 , $-'"» .' 

" The understanding was, thai ibis was $o,000 aiuccc I 



10 



pU l <lirad4 mtUer take the $5,000 down, and not take | 
Vhc 001 tract.' 
. ,' r ! •' . : ' r ' WaVthis $5,000 apiece for four men ? 
ft ;V-r I >r« A iho numhe? or men who «vere .needed 
teJSSTiaJ.or-n*. the committee, whichever A was. 
' Sea n .wearB he appropriated the $5,000 to 
bis own use. but it turned out that the mem- 
' bers to be converted were converted. He says, 
^farther examination, in answer to the ques- 
tion "Did you know any other parties who 

Bet the Lecompton bill passed? Answer. 
"There were plenty of them.'' He mentions, 
anion* those '-who urged members to vote for 
that bill/' Colonel Medary, Mr Johnson, candi- 
date for Marshal, old Colonel bawyer, J. K 
Miller, Jndge Kennon, A. J. Dickenson also 
candidate for United States Marshal. These 
men were not Bean's nor Wendell's men. lhey 
were marshalled by the Administration— one 
being made a Governor, and others receiving 
its patronage in other shapes. Mr. Wendell s 
men engaged in the same business, were in- 
aucntiaf persons connected with the press, and 
bavin- access to the members as reporters 
around the purlieus of the Capitol. To a Mr. 
Walker, correspondent of the New York Ex- 
press, he gave $2,500 ; to a Mr. Hay he gave 
in notes some sixteen thousand dollars. He 
was intimate and influential with the members 
both from the States of Pennsylvania and New 

Mr". Olin asks Mr. Wendell: "Was it not 
talked over and canvassed, who was most likely 
to be influenced?" Mr. Wendell replies: 
"Yes, sir; I presume it was." Question: 
" Then the money was designed for these pe- 
culiar subjects?" Answer: " Very probably 
it was." Question : " It strikes me that money 
would hardly have been paid without some 
definite object or purpose to be accomplished 
with the money ? " Answer : " The object was 
accomplished, and the money was paid. 
There are about two hundred and twenty pages 
of testimony obtained by Covooe, and all point 
to the conclusion thus laconically given by 
Mr. Wendell in a single .line. 

The enormous receipts and expenditures of 
Mr. Buchanan'3 Printer to the Executive De- 
partments is a matter of wonder, compared with 
Mr. Van Buren's time. Mr. Wendell, ^pur- 
chaser, and at one time sole owner, of the 
official organ, and its paymaster even after he 
had disposed of it, upon an understanding that 
be was to receive the Executive patronage as 
the price for his paper and contribution to its 
support, received, as shown by his bank ac- 
count alone, $929,000. In answer to the ques- 
tion, "How large were your profits on that 
work?" (printing for the Government.) An- 
swer : " I think I made over one hundred thou- 
sand dollars one year." Question : " Did you 
not, for political purposes, within the last three 
or four years, use a much larger amount of 
money than you used on previous occasions- 
pome hundred thousand dollars?" Answer: 



" My impression is, that it was about one hun- 
dred and twenty-eight or one hundred and 
thirty thousand dollars." 

Mr. Alexander, a Democrat, and a printer 
for eight or ten years employed in the Execu- 
tive printing, in his testimony before Covode's 
Committee, shows that now-a-days the public 
functionaries can make the amount of printing 
almost what they please. The enormous ag- 
gregate, the growth of the present Presidential 
term, sustains Mr. Alexander's statement, made 
on oath ; and this fact makes a comparison of 
the expenditure under Mr. Van Buren's (the 
last really Democratic Administration) with 
that of Mr. Buchanan's, (which it may be hoped 
is the last of the spurious ones, assuming and 
abusing the Democratic name,) a most impor- 
tant means in discriminating the true from the 
counterfeit Democracy. Economy is the great 
test of honesty in Government, and honesty is 
the main ingredient in Democracy rightly un- 
derstood. It is a mere trusteeship, managing 
the concerns of the people according to their 
will. Now, the Government printing, which 
the President and his partisans in Congress, 
when controlling, may employ to enlighten the 
public by honest official intelligence, may be 
used to corrupt the press, the organ of public 
opinion, by jobs and largesses. The testimony 
before the Committee proves that Mr Buchanan 
used it not only for this purpose, but also to 
assist his political intrigues, by applying funds 
obtained through contracts filching money 
from the Treasury by false constructions of the 
law, to keep up a third party organization to 
defeat the will of the majority of the people by 
distracting their votes. A look back on such 
developments, in Covode's report, gives great 
significance to the contrast in the amount 
drawn from the Treasury for printing in Mr. 
Van Buren's term and that in Mr. Buchanan's; 
especially as there never was an imputation of 
fraud attached to Mr. Van Buren, and it has 
been proved on Mr. Buchanan. 

The printing of Congress, including paper, 
during the four years of Mr. Van Buren's Ad- 
ministration, amounted to $506,284.96, which 
is made up as follows : 

Tiventy-Jifth Congress. 

Senate, (Blair & Rives) 3^?>Sf 'Vt 

House, (Thomas Allen) 231,017.16 



Aggregate 319,605.35 

Tiventy-sixtfi Congress. 

Senate, (Blair & Rives). $76,ftD1.5 < J 

House, (Blair & Rives) 111,078.0'.' 

Aggregate 187,679.61 

The printing of the Thirty-fifth Congress, in- 
cluding paper, the first two years of Mr. Buchan- 
an's Administration, amounts to $669,713.07, 
which is 32 per cent, more than it amounted to 
during the four years of Mr. Van Buren's Ad- 
ministration. 

If the printing of this (the Thirty-sixth) Con- 
gress shall amount to as much as the Thirty- 



11 



fifth Congress— and from present appearances I 
it will amount to at least as much— then the 
printing of Congress during the four years of 
Mr. Buchanan's Administration will amount to 
$1,336,426.14— which is double, and 64 per 
cent, over, approaching triple, what it amounted 
to during the four years of Mr. Van Buren s 
Administration. 

The amount paid by the Government lor 
printing blanks, including paper, for the Post 
Office Department, during the four years ot Mr. 
Van Buren's Administration, is $124,899.99, 
as appears from the Official Register of 1839 
and 1841, showing an average expenditure of 
$31,224.90 a year. 

The amount paid by the Government for print- 
ing blanks, including paper, for the Post Office 
Department, to be sent to postmasters, during 
the two first years of Mr. Buchanan's Admin- 
istration, as is shown by the testimony of Mr. 
Offutt, of the Sixth Auditor's office, and Mr. 
Heart, Superintendent of Public Printing, is 
$146,475.67, which is at the rate of $73,237.83 
a year, which is double as much, and 34 per 
cent, more than was paid a year during Mr. 
Van Buren's Administration. 

The $31,224.9!) a year expended under Mr. 
Van Buren's Administration includes the 
amount paid for printing blanks used in the 
General Post Office Department, as well as 
those sent out to postmasters, to be used by 
them. The $73,237.83 expended by Mr. Bu- 
chanan's Administration a year does not in- 
clude the blanks used in the General Post 
Office, but only those sent to postmasters. We 
have no means of ascertaining the amount 
paid for blanks used in the General Post 
Office, nor in any of the other Executive De- 
partments of the Government, during Mr. Bu- 
chanan's Administration. 

The testimony of Mr. Alexander (for nine 
or ten years a contractor for printing under 
the Departments) explains how this extraordi- 
nary increase has grown up under a profligate 
Administration. Mr. Alexander replies to a 
question, "What is the probable amount of 
printing?" Answer: "They can make it 
almost any amount they please; it depends 
entirely upon the Department. They can cut 
out an order at any time they think proper, 
and say that the exigencies of the Department 
or the good of the public interest requires that 
certain binding or printiug should be done, 
and it is ordered to be done." 

The question was, " whether you know what 
the printing and binding of the different De- 
partments have amounted to a year, during Mr. 
Buchanan's Administration?" Answer: "J 
cannot say that I have examined, critically, to 
ascertain the amount; but I should think 
the binding, to the best of my knowledge, 
would amount to $100,000 any how. I 
speak of all the Departments." Question : 
" Is the printing as large an item as the bind- 
ing?" Answer: "O! the printing is a much 
larger item." To another question he replies : 



" The printing is a much larger item than the 
binding, and the Departments can make it 
almost as profitable as they please." 

Congress, to prevent the growth of this great 
abuse, exacted that the Executive Departments 
should contract for the binding only with prac- 
tical bookbinders ; but this was disregarded by 
the Departments. A leading and very honest 
bookbinder appealed to the President. lie 
pretended to refer it for the opinion of the 
Attorney General. The bookbinder followed it. 
The Attorney General said the President had 
not referred it. On examining the papers, they 
were endorsed by the President, referred to the 
Attorney General, but not for his opinion. The 
bookbinder told this to the President ; he ex- 
pressed surprise ; told him to go to the Attor- 
ney General, and tell him to give you his opin- 
ion in reference to the law. Tell him I say 
so. The Attorney responds to the suitor: 
" You know, Mr. Pettiboue, I cannot give you 
the opinion unless the request is made in 
writing ;" but, he added, " I will see the Presi- 
dent to dav, and will ask him about it." The 
honest mechanic calls again on the Attorney 
General, Judge Black. "He had seen the 
President, and" he declined interfering." Mr. 
Pettibone again approaches the President, and 
said : " Mr. President, did I understand you 
aright? You assured me I should have the 
opinion of the Attorney General upon a cer- 
tain law ; now Judge Black informs me that 



you decline allowing him to give an opinion. 
The President replies : " He informed you cor- 
rectly ; I do decline." . 

Thus our high dignitaries, sworn to admin- 
ister the law, violate it so grossly that they 
dare not put on paper a pretext for their con- 
duct. They are too high for the law, yet stoop 
to mean double-dealing, to evade the just claim 
of an honest citizen, and, to escape responsi- 
bility, refuse to give an official form to the 
transaction. The one hundred thousand dol- 
lars per annum went to Wendell's corruption 
fund of millions. According to law, it ought to 
have gone to practical mechanics of the book- 
binding craft, some of whom offered to do it 
for one-third of the price given to Wendell, 
and were recommended' for it by an honesty 
and responsibility vouched for before the Com- 
mittee by some of the most respectable men of 
the city. From this it will be seen, that the 
mode of supply was in keeping with the motives 
that guided the application of public money. 

But Mr. Wendell's was open and round 
dealing, on his principles, with members of 
Congress, and decent and polite, too. That 
of the Administration was full of duplicity and 
cunning, overbearing and unjust, then truck- 
ling and yielding and corrupt throughout. 
Alf this is displayed in the case of Mr. Cox, 
of Ohio, casually brought to light by the Co- 
vode Committee in looking into the man- 
agement of the English bill. Mr. Cox was 
among the first in the House to break ground 
against the Lecompton Constitution. The wrath 



I 



12 



of the Executive at once made him an example 
of its vengeance. Mr. Miller, of Columbus, his 
special friend, had received the lucrative post 
office of the city, to reward him and his friend 
Cox for zealous service in that hard-fought 
district, ousting its Republican Representative 
from Congress. The refusal of Cox to sanction 
the Lecompton frauds was instantly followed 
by the dismission of his friend Miller from the 
post office, the place that marked him with 
Administration confidence, and made him its 
leader at the capital of the State. And what 
made it worse, Medary, who was unfriendly to 
both Cox and Miller, was made Postmaster. 
This. fixed Cox as a Douglas partisan and de- 
fier of the Administration. But when the 
English bill was put forward to exclude Kan- 
sas, it was found that Cox's vote was necessary 
to carry it. General Wilson, a Democrat, and 
son-in-law to Medary, of the Ohio Statesman, 
was solicited, by the then Postmaster General 
Brown, to see Cox to get his vote. The wit- 
ness, Wilson, says : 

" Governor Brown wished me to call upon the member of 
Congress from my district, Mr. Cox, and say to him that he 
would be very glad if he would vote for the English bill 
He told me to press it upon him, and desired me to 
say further to him, that if he would vote for the English bill 
he would bo received into high favor with the Post Office 
Department, and bygones would be bygones. 
" Question. Proceed, if you please ; what else occurred? 
" Answer. I called upon Mr. Cox, and told him what had 
been said by the Postmaster General. 
" Question. What was his reply to it? 
" Answer. Mr. Cox said he had not made up his mind 
upon the subject, but he would make up his mind, and no 
doubt it would he all right. That was all ho said, 'i got no 
satisfactii « from Mr. Cox. Mr. Cox and myself were not on 
the best terms, growing out of the removal-of Mr. Cox's 
friend, Mr. Miller, from the post office, and the puttiug in of 
my lather in-law, (Colonel Medary.") 

How cunning in that celebrated intriguer, 
Postmaster General Brown, (Aaron Vicarious, 
as Benton called him,) to send, as the peace- 
maker, the son-in-law of the man put in the 
post office, (the Headsman of the Statesman,) 
for the express purpose of arming him to de- 
stroy Cox in his district ! But this was not all. 
Medary was himself called to Washington, to 
brandish his battle-axe in the eyes of poor Cox. 
He had returned from his Governorship to 
Minnesota, where he had been employed in 
making a Legislature on the pattern of the Le- 
compton Convention, and returning two false 
Senators to Congress. He had sold out the 
Statesman on taking the Minnesota Governor- 
ship, but being called to Washington to scare 
Cox, and being appointed Postmaster at Co- 
lumbus, he resolved to buy, or make a feint 
of buying back, that party engine of torture. 
The Committee interrogated him about this, 
and he answered : 



" It is probable that a great deal of the stories going about 
grew out of this matter, (his buying the Statesman,) or 
something of the kind; hut it had nothing to do with buviue 
members of Congress, but was meant to excoriate some of 
them I did not want to buy them, but I wanted ' to put 
them through,' as the saying is." 



' There was a strong application made to me buy out the 
Ohio Statesman again. During the pendency of the matter 
(English bill,) I went home, and made inquirv to see whether 
I could buy it or not ; but 1 could not. But that had nothing 
to do with influencing members of Congress, but to excori- 
ate those we did not think inclined to keep in the ranks." 

In answer to another interrogatory about this 
preparation to start papers in Ohio for the Ad- 
ministration, against the recreant members, he 
adds : I 



Cox was still in doubt, when Medary left to 
get ready his machine to " put him through," 
as well as the rest of his Ohio confreres. Cox 
held out to the very eve of the vote. He con- 
sulted his friends, who called a meeting of 
the Douglas leaders. One of them, a witness 
before the Committee, (a Mr. Geiger,) after 
stating that Cox had written to them's, letter of 
two sheets against the bill, adds, " he desired 
to ascertain whether, if he breasted the cur- 
rent, we would stand by him. We consulted a 
long while about the matter, but finally tele- 
graphed to Mr. Cox to vote against the Eng- 
lish bill, and go no further than to take Mr. 
Quitman's amendment. That telegraphic dis- 
patch was signed by the whole of u§. Mr. Cox 
telegraphed in reply, that night, <I breathe 
easier— Douglas will break ground against it 
to-morrow ; break ground, or come out against 
it rough shod, or something of that kind.' " 
Well, the morrow came, and Mr. Cox voted for 
the English bill. 

The mystery is unravelled by the testimony 
taken before the Committee. Dickerson, the 
candidate for Marshal, went to Cox while he 
was threatened with defeat by Medary and the 
Administration power in his district on one 
hand, and coaxed by Postmaster General 
Brown on the other. And Dickerson (as Bean 
swears) "told me himself that he helped to 
manage the matter with Mr. Cox ; " and how, 
will be seen from results. General Geiger,' 
one of the leaders whom he consulted about 
his course, afterwards upbraided him for his 
defiance of his constituents' instructions ; when, 
to conciliate him, Cox proposed to give him an 
appointment to go to New Mexico, to adjust 
some two hundred and fifty or three hundred 
thousand dollars worth of Government claims ; 
told him he had met the President and one of 
his Cabinet, who " congratulated him on hav- 
ing voted in that way," (for the English bill,) 
saying, "they thought it had saved the country 
and party." Then Mr. Buchanan said " there 
were probably some vacancies in the Interior 
Department, and if he had any friends, there 
might be some places for them." After this, he 
proposed the commission to New Mexico to 
settle claims amounting to two hundred and 
fifty or three hundred thousand dollars. He 
replied, ' I would look rather scaly in going 
back home after taking the office under James 
Buchanan, after the manner in which I had 
spoken of him, publicly, and the opinion that I 
had of him.' General Geiger adds, < I told Mr. 
Cox I was very much obliged to him for his 
kindness in offering me the place ; and as he 
had been so courteous, I wanted to give him a 
little advice, that whatever patronage he had to 
dispense, he should hold in his own fist until 
after the election in the fall, and not have 



13 



any appointment until after he had gone 
thro ugh the contest, because he would in all 
probability be the nominee of the party, and it 
would weaken his standing very much. He 
would be charged with being bought" 

Mr. Cox acted upon the suggestion of this 
sagacious Democrat, who spurned the share 
offered him in the spoils. Lie kept the re-ap- 
pointment of his friend Miller back, until after 
his re-election in October. Then, the whole 
arrangement that brought Cox over to the bill, 
to defraud Kansas of her place in the Union, 
was revealed. Oregon, with a little more than 
half her population, was made a State, to bring 
General Lane into the Senate ; but Kansas 
was kept out, that she might have no voice 
there or in the choice of President. She was 
compelled to receive Medary as Governor, he 
resigning the post office at Columbus to Cox's 
friend, MiU, r, and giving his consent that his 
enemy, Miller, with whom he made friends, 
might buy a partnership in his old paper, the 
Statesman, have his good will in it, without 
which Milhr said it would be worthless ; and 
there was a promise that six thousand dollars 
worth of patronage should follow the paper, it 
being "stipulated that it should give an ac- 
ceptable support to the Administration." This 
capitulation was in writing, and signed by 
Medary and Cox. Miller says, in his testimony, 
trying to cover up this bargain, that Medary 
threw this in "after we had settled our diffi- 
culties, and shaken hands upon it, and felt 
pretty good," &c. The Committee could not 
got at the paper signed by Cox and Medary, 
but Mr. Smith says the promise was not made 
good about the six thousand dollars, and makes 
it very clear that, in his opinion, it was with- 
held because he, the partner with Miller, and the 
editor, would not give the " acceptable support." 

It seems, from testimony before the Covode 
Committee, that the President was extremely 
sensitive to attack on his Kansas policy and 
Lecompton frauds, in such leading papers as 
the Statesman, in Columbus, and Forney's 
Press, in Philadelphia. The editor of the 
Statesman refused his support to those frauds, 
and lost the §11,000 bid; Mr. Forney de- 
nounced these frauds in his paper, and, soon 
after, the Attorney General, (Black,) through 
Mr. Webster, a lawyer of standing in Philadel- 
phia, proposed to buy off Forney's opposition. 
Webster, a stroug Administration man, had 
been solicitous to have Forney in favor with 
the Administration, and wrote so to the Presi- 
dent's intimate friend, Attorney General Black. 
On this hint, Black posts off this note: 

" December 18, 1 so 7. 

" Mr Dear Sir : There is no deQuilc uor iudclluite ar- 
rangement made of the aflair to which you refer. If you 
desire to Jo your highly- valued friend a great service, you 
should come here immediately. I have long desired to see 
you. Please to" come, if you won't come, say so by tele- 
graph. Y< in-, ever, J. S. BLACK." 

This was a very cunning letter, and Web- 
ster came. Webster gives this account of the 
interview to the Committee : 



" I came on here, and we had a long conversation upon 
the subject. He stated to me that it was evident that Col. 
Forney's course would ultimately laud hitu with the Oppo- 
sition unless it was stopped, and predicted that Ins bones 

u M whiten on the shore of Black Republicanism, along 

with the bones of Wilmut. Jle was very desirous, indeed, 
that i '"I. Forney should gi\ In ins newspaper 

that be meant to remain with the Democratic party. Ho 
gald he wanted a paragraph no larger than tie- palm of my 
band, in which Col. Forney should aimpl) Bay, that while 
this question had arisen, and was a BeriouB one, it was one, 
nevertheless, to be settled within tie- 1 • -m- '•- -it it- org 
lion ; that a was a t.nr subject tor difference, but not for 
opposition ; aiei he would abide by th • decision of the Dem- 
ocratic party upon that subject. 

might become known. I asked aim,. ' What thaaf * Woll, 

i, i wa than to do whatever was in his 

power in aid ol Col. Forney's paper. I asked, what - 

the jiost office blanks f He sal i thai Ool Forney, with tins 

assurance, could have the printing of tin-in. This contract 

was valued by Ool. Forney's friends at about 189400. I 

Judge Black what portion of the printing of the post 

i in- given to him. II.- .- i.'i, tin- whole 

of it. I then remarket, ' \\Y1I, now, are \ on able, it 

tins thing is accomplished, to fulfil what you promise f Will 

there be no disapj tmont about Itf' lb- gave me to 

understand that ho, of course, would not hold such a con- 
versation with me, without it was in bis i>ower to lullii all 
he did promise." 

The witness gives this as the result of the 
proposition : 

"Col. Forney indignantly refused to comply with Judgo 
Black's wishes, and was very emphatic in expressing his 
refusal." 

This was the second attempt of the President 
to disarm Forney, whose position in Philadel- 
phia he feared. Wendell gives the facts thus to 
Covode's Committee, touching the President's 
first effort to relieve himself of Forney's ap- 
prehended opposition : 

" Question. Did you not carry a large sum of money, for 
a considerable length of time, to givo to Col. Forney, in the 
eventof his accepting the place abroad? K so, state how 
much, and for what length of time you carried it. 

" Answer. I carried $10,1)00, for the pur]K>so of giving it 
to hint, for some three weeks — nineteen days, if my mem- 
ory serves me, I think it was. 

" Question. By whose authority or instructions? 

" Answer. Well, sir, it might bo said to bo by the Presi- 
dent's. 

" Mr. Winslow. Give us facts, now. 

" By the Chairman : 

" Question. You will state the facts, if you please. 

"Answer. Tho President was desirous to have Mr. 
Forney go abroad, and tendered hiin, as I understood from 
him, either the Liverpool consulate, or the Berlin or Vienna 
mission, one of the two. In a conversation as to amount of 
compensation he would receive if he went abroad, the sug- 
gestion was made that he might participate in the public 
printing. And, alter several conversations, it w.us agreed 
that he-should have a certain amount of the printing, which 
should make his salary equal to $'20,000 or $25,000 per 
annum. Tins difference, over what ins salary would be, 
was to be (laid from the public printing. Mr. Forney de- 
clined at lirst, ami, anions other reasons, stated his inabil- 
ity, m a financial point of view, to leave. I finally agreed 
to raise $10,000 in advance lor him, and did raise it ; and, 
as I stated before, I carried the money for nineteen days, 
until he at last totally refused to go." 

It appears that Wendell was indeed the 
purse bearer of the President, for, in answer to 
another question, " Were you authorized to 
guarauty, or did you do so on your own re- 
sponsibility, that the amount of his pay should 
be |20,000 or $25,000 ? " he answered, " I was 
in a measure authorized to make an arrange- 
ment to pay him some sum out of the proceeds 
of the public printing.'' 

"Question. Authorized by whom? 

"Answer. By the President." 

It is important to remark the consequence 
of this mode, adopted by the President of 



14 



taking money from the proceeds of contracts, 
by arrangement with contractors, and apply- 
ing it to his own private purposes. It is seen 
already, from the testimouy of Mr. Alexander, 
who had been printer for some years to the 
Executive Departments, that they could make 
the printing amount to what they pleased, and 
that, under their construction of the law, it 
yielded 50 per cent, net profit ; and of this 
profit, the President and his subalterns took 
the lion's share. In an instance given by 
Wendell, he being the manager, the profits, at 
43 per cent., amounted to $15,105.26 ; and of 
this, under instructions, he gave $9,707.28 to 
the Pennsylvanian, and $5,400 to the Phil- 
adelphia Argus. Here, under the shadow of a 
contract with an individual, yielding $15,000 
beyond the sum for which the work was exe- 
cuted, this sum was literally embezzled for 
personal uses designated by the President. 
When the President, through his Secretaries, 
makes contracts without letting to the lowest 
bidder, or, where so let, they assume, as .they 
often do, to set the lowest bid aside, and give 
it to a favorite at a higher bid, they can make 
this disposable profit what they please, ascer- 
taining what the work will cost, and then add- 
ing to the contract such an extra profit as will 
satisfy the contractor, and leave the requisite 
surplus for their own purposes. But, in the 
case of the post office blanks, the price of 
printing being fixed by law, (one dollar per 
one thousand sheets,) fraud was connived 
at, or rather perpetrated, by our public " func- 
tionarief/' old and young, to give the Ex- 
ecutive a large electioneering fund. There 
happens to be no composition or setting up 
type necessary in these blanks, a few inches in 
size. A form is cast, which is in fact but one 
type, and is always kept ready by the printers 
of these blanks, among his materials, ready to 
go to press. Mr. Rives, being sworn, deposed 
before the Committee, that when this work was 
done by him, he never charged for composi- 
tion, because there was none, but only for 
press-work and paper. But the present Ad- 
ministration assumed that, every time blanks 
were ordered and sheets were struck, though no 
types were actually set up, it must be presumed ; 
and so they called for blanks three or six times 
a day, or oftener, just as they desired to augment 
the surplus fund they derived from the con- 
tractor for the blanks. Since Mr. King's ex- 
posure of the fraud through the Senate's Com- 
mittee, the abuse has been abated, and the 
printing of the post office blanks is now done 
by contract at a deduction of 94^ per cent., or 
for 5| cents on the dollar of the late prices for 
Executive printing. For what purposes this 
easy-gotten money was sometimes disbursed, I 



through Mr. Buchanan's purse-bearer, Wen- 
dell, will be seen from the replies of Mr. 
Megargee to interrogatories before Mr. King's 
Committee : 

" Question. Did you receive any money for political pur- 
poses in Pennsylvania or Now Jersey from Mr. Wendell? 

" Witness. Am I really compelled to answer such ques- 
tions? 

" Mr. Kennedy. I think it is within tho scope of the in- 
quiry. 

" The Committee thought the question was a proper one, 
and that it should be answered. 

" Answer. I did, sir, receive money, at various times, for 
political purposes. 

" Question. Were those moneys expended for the promo- 
tion of the interests of the Democratic party ? 

" Answer. Not all of them. Some of it was used for a 
third party, which was organized to divert votes from what 
was known as the ' People's party ' with us. The ' People's 
party ' was in opposition to tho Democratic party. We did 
not know there the party organized as the ' Republican 
party.' The opposition to the Democratic party was called 
1 the People's party ; ' and to divert votes from that party, 
the third party was organized. The object was to divide 
the ' People's party.' 

" Question. Was such a third party organized? 

" Answer. Yes, sir. 

" Question. Did you believe that was necessary to the suc- 
cess of the Democratic party ? 

" Answer. We certainly did, or we should not have given 
them the money. 

" Question. What was that third party called ? 

"Answer. The straight American party; the 'straight- 
outs.' 

"Question. You speak both of Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey ? 

" Answer. Yes, sir. 

" Question. And of those States only? 

" Answer. Yes, sir ; of those only." 

* Here we see Mr. Buchanan repeating the 
game played in making him President. 
Money was used, on the eve of the Presiden- 
tial election, to keep up the organization of the 
Fillmore straight-out Americans in Philadel- 
phia, to prevent 'them from uniting their 
strength with the party of freedom, to which 
they were drawn by principle. Heartless 
leaders were hired to urge the party discipline 
on the Americans, to defeat their wishes, and 
make that man President whom they most ab- 
horred. And so we find this system of cor- 
ruption and intrigue strenuously pursued 
under Mr. Buchanan as a policy. Mr. King's 
report from the Senate Committee thus groups 
the facts given in proof of this policy : 

" Besides these largo sums paid by the printer who exe- 
cuted the printing, as bonus for the contracts, large sums 
were paid out of the printing money to be expended in elec- 
tions to iniluence their results. Mr. Wendell testifies that 
ho contributed, directly or indirectly, 5100,000 during the 
four years ; and Mr. Wendell, during the lour years ending 
March, 1859, executed tho public printing. He contributei 
for different Congressional districts in Pennsylvania, for the 
elections — in Colonel Florence's district, $2,200 ; in J. Glan- 
cy Jones's district, SI, 000, but Jones was defeated ; in Mill- 
ward's district, $500. He also contributed ia Whito's, Ri- 
ley's, and Landy's districts. Mr. Wendell testifies that it 
was known to the Executive Departments that he was a con- 
tributing agent ; that the President was cognizant of the 
fact that he was spending money liberally, though he never 
mentioned to him the exact amount in any particular dis- 
trict. He said he had on his books an item of SI ,500 which 
ho contributed in New York ; that he went up the river, and 
contributed, among others, in Mr. Nevins's district ; that he 



■fjpsr^j^jj * Megargee shows how the American vote of Pennsylvania was dissipated to relieve Buchanan of their op- 
lySs5?E position in the State election of 1856. Lalferty, a member of the Democratic Executive Committee, andfriend 
of Buchanan, most reluctantly proves that more than 5,000 forged naturalization papers were used to carry the State in 
that election lor Buchanan. His plurality was 2,200. The foreign vote on forged papers gave him the Slate vote and the 
Presidency. His friend, the Collector of Philadelphia, it is proved, sent oil' a trunk full of these forgeries for use in the ul- 
terior, and others were scut under the frank of Senator Bigler. — See Covode's Report, pages 391 to 403. 



10 



also contributed in Now Jarscy, and some small amounts in 
Maryland. And Mr. Wendell tcstili 'S that, without this 
public printing, ho would nut have been able to make the 
contributions he did." 

While this plan of operations was in progress, 
pending the elections, Wendell was in. constant 
consultation with the President, the latter read- 
ins his letters from the several districts to Wen- 
dell, and Wendell those received by him. This 
passage in Wendell's testimouy, referring to 
one occasion, displays the intin "*e relations 
between them : 

'■ Question. Do you recollect, on the occasion of your go- 
ing to see the i'. ident, whether it was voluntary, 01 
you sent fi ir '( 

" Answer. I was not sent for. I was up almost 
with litters. 1 had a pri tty extensive correspond' ace, 1 
would read to him extracts from mj letters and wh i1 
I had from different parte ol tho country where elections 
wore about com og off. Thu conversations would bo of a 
friendly, political charact ir. 

" Question did not t ike these letters in 

your hands. What wa th occasion of these letters being 
alluded to, and the c i yo i ? 

"Answer. to show what tho prospects wero. 

They were lctti i ol a general political character, as I In- 
ferred from whal be told monitor looking them over. He 
had apparei I thin all over before I camo into th • 

room. The\ can u i i how the cause was pri 
ing. 

"Qui i hi recollect whether, in answvr or reply 

to any of tl , you did send off monoyt 

'•Answer. [| mj memory serves mo, I returnod to Phfla- 
delphlathal c ining,orthe next evening, with munitions. 
1 think I retun ed that evening. 1 bad returned home tin 
evening before, and had looked after my business during 
the day, ami went back the samo evening to Philadelphia. 
I was backwards and forwards, pretty actively engaged in 
preaching the good doctrine. 

" By the ( e.OKMAN : 

V Question. Bj ' munitions ' you mean money, do you? 

"Answer. V 

" Question. And you loft the evening of the conversation 
With the Pros: 

•'Answer. Y 
" By Mr. WotSXOW : 

" Question. Vv ill you give the particulars of the conver- 
sation ? 

"Answer. It was general talk upon' tho subject of elec- 
tions and our prospects. 
" By Mr. Ou.\ : 

"Question. And the probabilities of carrying the district? 

'■ Answer. TIk probabilities of carrying tho district in 
which he was a candidate. And from tho conversation, I 
niade up my mind thai that district was a gono case; I 
put it down among the hopeless cases. 

'• Question. I in your return to Washington, subsequently, 
did you see the President? 

" Answer. I did, sir. 

" Question. Did you have any conversation with him 
upon the subject of tho election in Foster's Congressional 
district? 

" Answer. I did, and informed him what my views were 
ui>oii the subject I recollect having a conversation of that 
kind. 

" Question. Did you have any conversation with him upon 
the subject of what, it' any, money should be used in that 
district? 

" Answer. If :ny memory serves me, I did. I had a con • 
versatiou with nim ; and, it' my memory serves me, I told 
him that It w ess to do anything in that district ; 

that we were re w4 commenced there. 

'•Questiou. Do you rcollect whether, on tho occasion of 
that interview, he banded you any lottors in roforenco to 
the condition ol things in tho various districts of Pennsyl- 
vania? 

" Answer. I do, sir ; I have a recollection that ho had 
several letters, but I could not say positively that ono of 
them was from thai district, although that among other dis- 
tricts was the subject of conversation." 

Wendell is ruined by the earnest and prodi- 
gal zeal with which he devoted himself and 
means to give effect to Buchanan's corrupt in- 
trigues. Buchanan will retire from the Presi- 



I dency, like Mr. Polk, a much richer man than 
i he came into it ; but whether he will go into 

private life with a better reputation than Mr. 

Windell, is doubtful. Their . ruins'. 

the Government were alike. I Pn -.dent 
i was the master, and an accompli 
I sphere assigned to W< n VII j bat it won. ; 

derogatory to him and his Cabim t I 

the management to maintain their ; 

confided entirely to their print r. These high 

officers have appeared on the e themsi 

and shown their pi . 

dell, their most active and unhesitating instru- 
ment, in all the venal 

probity from the Gov . | turn the pub- 

lic agents into dishonest 
signal acts of this sort on the pari ol 
dent and Secretaries have been branded with 

the censure of the HonseofRept lentath 
■ majorities — respectable men of al! 
ties uniting in the Ti 

One of the acts censured by reso'ution of 
the House was thai of the Presi lent and 3 
cretary Toucey, dividing the i : tie- 

coal agency between Hunter, a doctor of B 
ing, Getz, an editor in Reading, an ! Smith, % 
man engaged in the omnibus basin* 
delphia. Neitherofthe.se men even profi 
to have a knowledge of the different sorts. of 
coal, and neither of them atten ie 1 to the pur- 
chase, the measurement, or inspection, of the 
coal purchased for the United States. "The 
whole business was turned over to Tyler, 
Stone, & Co., who became at once pun ha ■ tl 
for and sellers to the Government." 11 , 
and Smith divided between them, for this sine- 
cure, $7,442.92, Getz having the lion- 
fuse to share in wages given out of the 'IV . 
ury for political services. Besides, the Govern- 
ment was cheated in the price of the coal, and 
under the name of a coal agency. The Com- 
mittee's report says : 
"In addition to this direct loss, the mi Ie of pot 

i furnished no guaranty ag uUlty 

or the amount of coal, which wh «*u\l 

was not Inspected by anj ofDi 

J. Glancy Jones, our Minister to Austria, is 
reported by the Committee to the House to have 
had a haud in this arrangement, being then a 
member of Congress from the district. I; I 
not appear in proof that he took a share, but 
from the interest he manifested he maj have 
taken that which Getz refused, for he i 
ported by the Committee, on making anotli tr 
arrangement for some of his constituents, tn 
h.ave taken some of the money. Thev " r 
that Hon. J. Glancy Jones, while a meml " 
this House, entered into a contract with 
Reading Forge Company, by which he > freed 
to procure work for it from the Govern: 
in consideration of which he was to receive 
five per cent, commission, and U In 

ceive money from said company for laid 
vice," and this in violation of the -pirit of the 
laws cited in the report. " Q of 

these laws was to prevent a member of Co:. • 



16 



from hating any pecuniary interest in a con- 
tract with any officer of the Government, or in 
any claim against the Government." 

The House of Representatives, by resolution 
passed by a decisive majority, comprising 
member* of all parties, next censured the Ad- 
ministration for violation of law and mischief 
to the public service, in a corrupt transaction, 
of which this is an outline, taken from the 
Committee's report: 

George Plitt, a noted familiar partisan and 
instrument of Buchanan, entered into writ- 
ten agreement with one Swift, to help him to 
obtain live-oak contracts from the Govern 
ment for ten per cent, on the gross amounts of 
tbe contracts made. "Pending the Presiden- 
tial election of 185G, Plitt introduced Swift to 
Mr. Buchanan, and sought to place him in the 
very best position he possibly could with the 
President. Plitt at the time was treasurer of 
the Democratic State Central Committee of 
Pennsylvania, and as such received from Swift 
the sum of §16,000, of which Swift contributed 
$10,000, and received the balance of his im- 
m mediate friends, to be used in the pending 
election. Alter the election, and the Cabinet 
formed, Plitt introduced Swift to Toucey, tell- 
ing the Secretary of Swift's advances, and that " 
(using his own words,) "such gentlemen ought 
to be patronized, of course;" and, in fact, and 
•ot course," "contracts for live oak were 
awarded to Swift for 150,000 feet, to be deliv- 
ered at three of the navy yards. An outstanding 
contract with a Mr. Blanchard was cancelled, 
and awarded to Swift in November, 1857. The 
amount of these contracts is $232,940," and they 
were effected under circumstances which make 
it probable that they were "a foregone conclu- 
sion on the advance of the $10,000 to Mr 
Buchanan's treasurer, Plitt, for operating in 
his election, of which Toucey, too, was duly 
apprized by Plitt, ou introducing Swift to him 
It is not to be believed that Toucey would have 
been guilty of the violation of law in the transac- 
tion, and the false pretences to which he resorted 
to cover it, unless he had been made sensible 
that the President had come under positive 
obligations, which he was compelled to make 
such sacrifices to discharge. 

The law is, that "all purchases, &c, made 
by or under the direction of the Secretary of 
the Navy, shall be made either by open pur- 
chase or by previously advertising for propo- 
sals respecting the same, &c. Purchases in 
open market cannot be resorted to except in 
case of such articles as are wanted for use so 
immediate as not to admit of contracts by ad- 
vertisement." 

To get round these imperative provisions, 
and enable Swift to realize on his advance of 
sixteen thousand dollars contingent on Buchan- 
an s election large profits without competition, 
the. following plan was adopted : " Prior to June 
lbjS, (says the Report,) Swift brought to 
some ot the navy yards large quantities of tim- 



ber, which was rejected— some of it because 
the size was below that prescribed by the con- 
tract, and some for its inferior quality. By rule 
of the Department, at most of the navy yards 
umber not coming within the contract was re' 
quired to be removed before that which had 
been accepted would be paid for." The tim- 
ber Swift wanted to get rid of was exempted 
from the rule, and his first effort was to get the 
Secretary to buy it upon open purchase, but he 
decided he could not, because it was not " for 
immediate use." The Secretary then ascer- 
taining, from his chief clerk of his bureau, " the 
shortest time within which the timber could be 
cut and transported to the various navy yards, 
made his advertisement for such short time 
that nobody could deliver in time to compete 
with Swift, and the kind of timber described 
was such as Swift had in the yards. The lum- 
bermen saw this fraud in the advertisement, 
and one of them, Mr. Brown, of Maine, (called 
as a witness,) says he told Swift that he "knew 
it was got out for his benefit." The witness 
says: 

"I advised him for his own reputation, to go to the Sec- 
tary and mduco him to withdraw that advertisement and 
let h„n purchase his timber, if he wanted it for immediate 
use He told me that he had been trying to inducetRc 
retaryto do that same thing, but the Wur^toMnta 
m^l, i ?. noa . ut ?°"ty topurcha.se this timber He ad 

smf • but Z T d r hat he could not d0 jt "**™* advert 
sing , but the advertising arrangement was such that no 
body could offer for it but himsW, bccu.st he lad It mbe 
m the yards, and he knew that no other man couU fiK 

SK£V* W0 ^° nI ? be t,iflm » to ^.ko any offer I 
stated to Mr. Swift that I should make an offer to take the 
contract in good faith, and then should ask the Secretary fo? 
an extension of time; says he, 'ho will not Irlnt \?> 
Well then,' said I, < lei him do that and w U r ep r he 
thing to Congress next winter.' " P 

Several other lumbermen, not supposing the 
Secretary would enforce an impossibility? but 
would allow a delivery of the timber at any 
time within the six months prescribed for the 
whole, made proposals, reducing the price be- 
ow that of Swift's, $28,000, and the proof was 
that it would have been $25,000 more if the 
usual terms of one or two years, for delivery, 
had been advertised, being $53,000 less than 
bwiits. ioucey encouraged some of them, who 
said they " were ready to do what other con- 
tractors had done to meet the wants of the 
Government, and asked whether one of their 
farm had not better go into Florida and ascer- 
tain what the wants of Government were there- 
to which the Secretary replied, that he had bet- 
ter ao so, and report to the Government 
before he returned, however, the contract had 
been awarded to Swift." 

1 ,in',-^ ring , aU this , time ' ( while lower bikers were em- 
ployed, m doing what on other occasions had obtained an 
extension of time in the usual long term con racts SwtS 
remained in Washington, in confidence th at h would fiS v 
get lie contracts. He assured Bialer « (hat he uZsat^d 
thai ike parties wouOL have to give them up rL "X 
was under obligations to him, amlhe thought he a U E 
^njluenee to lear iMt lk, v „ W(W ,»v, Mm tkc^eamU^ 
He said it was due to him for services rendered. ' ' 

The fraudulent design of the advertisement 
had become so visible that the Secretary was 
compelled to abandon it, and, in giving the 



17 



contract to Swift, he at last resorted to that of 
open purchase, -which in the beginning he re- 
jected, when proposed by Swift, because "it 
was against law to buy timber upon open pur- 
chase, except for immediate use," and, to bol- 
ster this pretence, alleges that there were fears 
of a rupture with Great Britain when the ad- 
vertisement was issued. To this, the Committee 
reply, " that in September, when the contract 
was made, our relations with Great Britain 
were certainly as harmonious as they have 
ever been at any time." And to show how 
unfounded was the statement that " the con- 
tract was made to supply the pressing and im- 
mediate wants of the Government," the Com- 
mittee say " they have directed their attention 
to that subject," and say that the naval con- 
structor at Norfolk testifies that "they have 
used up to this time (March 18, 183'J) leas 
than one thousand feet of Swill's timber, and 
that they have on hand five hundred thousand 
feet. At Kittery, the wants of the Govern- 
ment were supplied by open purchase from 
Bigler of three thousand feet, and at Pensecola 
Degraw had arranged with the naval con- 
structor for the few sticks for immediate use, 
and for the balance as needed." This shows 
how fallacious is the Secretary's pretence, that 
he was obliged to supply demands in 1858 by 
open purchase from Swift. The report of 
the Committee adds : 

" In June, 1£57, a greater necessity for timber existed 
than when the contracts were awarded to Swift, and yet 
the usual advertisement was then issued. It is wonhy of 
observation, moreover, that at 1'ensacola, where the Secre- 
tary informs us the. wants of the sorvico were most press- 
ing, Swift had QO timber, and did not deliver it as soon as 
the lowest bidders could have dono." 

Although the Secretary was compelled, by 
the unexpected bids, to reduce Swift to the 
lowest bid obtained, and in terms meant to de- 
ter bidders, yet he got, besides the usual profits 
made on such a contract, the $25,000 which 
the straitened terms of six months instead 
of two years made contractors add to their 
bids ; but, as he sold rejected timber at these 
high rates, the contract was in fact a gift of the 
whole money. It was probably the bargain on 
which the $10,000 for the Presidential election 
was advanced. Yet Swift was not content 
with this advantage. He refused to pay poor 
Plitthis per centum on this scandalous trans- 
action, and Plitt thereupon consulted the 
President. The result of this conference is 
thus stated by him : 

" I did not want to involve the present Administration iu 
any difficulty, and therefore I asked the President whether 
there would' bo any objection to my prosecuting Mr. BwlfJ 
In court for this claim. The President looked at thi 
menl made in 1S54, and said ho could not see any objection 
to it. Ho had, of course, no advice to give, and told mo I 
might do as I pleased about it." 

The President saw no impropriety in Plitt 
selling out his favor in anticipation for means 
to make it available ; and having realized his 
part of the speculation in reaching power, 
employed it in paying Swift out of the Treasury 
his $10,000 with usury, and compounded it for 



risks, <tc. He saw no reason why a court should 
not adjudge the pimp entitled to the stipula- 
ted wages of corruption. 

Another most fatal abuse censured by 
House was the prostitution of the navy yt 
t<> bring the hired force concentrate il in t 
to defeat the popular will in elections. T 
great establishments, in o;.- 
lions are expend) 1 I j the G 
turned into recruiting rendez 
tration members of Cun r 'ri-<. I 
on '"the Expenditure.-! for th" Navy I 1 ; 
ment" gives Brooklyn navy yar 1 ai 

pTej Bhowing how completely it is c »n*< 
from a naval into a political establilhme 
the whole concern being put onder the ch 
of members of Congress, i iiMt o;vt of • 
cers, as formerly. The 
■• The division of patrons i - \»»« 

rn in the yard I i»nd< i 

la w hem bt and each ol bis (ell >w» ■ 
Thus ili' - construe ive engii eer, tie- m 
the master block ' 
master pninler repn senied Mi S 
maker, mast r blai ksmiih, snd 
tented Mr. M ■<- bj . the. ma u r laborer mid i -i • 
strueiin^ engineer, >ii' - master bo i 
t.T ship-carpenter, represented .Mr T 
caulker represented Mr. Co 
cutter represented Mr Ward. Hi: it I May, 1 
t. - r laborer tuuler tl 

Mr Clark, and the muter carnenl i I Mi 

llaskiu. and so with all the heads ol I ■' 

labor ii. the i nr.l at Br oklyn." 

When Messrs. fiaskin and Clars 
the Lecompton fraud of the Administration, 
their recruiting sergeants were 1 by 

the partisans of aspirants who .sup; 
fraud. The Committee giv. - th | let- 

ter from John COCH&IXI to B I 
ter in the navy, showing the absolute anth .riiy 
exerted by members of I 
workmen in a local election which should be 
controlled by local citizens : 

■• Nj \v S ..BR, Jimt 14. I 
" Mr. Coiiane: Mr. Cullen tells mc thai yon OK 10 lake 
men on oifTucsday, .Now. I a-k you lo lake tarn on, 
nnd the others I have as ed you to lake on I ••■ have 
my proportion of men uiid< r yon; >i yon do n 
them, 1 will lodge charge* agaiocl yo i Yo ■ 
away all the men but i>n<- from my d irici 
this 1 have complained to the Secret r> n i 
you rectify this injustice, I will niaki appli u 
be turned out The beort r will bring me an a 

"Years ftc ■ JOHN COCHR \M ' 

Letters of Dan Sickles, among others, 
exhibited, calling on the Secretary to rei 
the heads of departments in the yard. It is 
doue on his demand, disobedience of hi.s orders 
being the charge. 

The effect of this derangement of our naval 
system is a double mischief The yard 
filled with a sort of electioneering lazaroui, 
who, being appointed and retained on « 
there, to operate in the can . 

patrons, are nnsuited to fl tploymt 

which they are nominally a 
beyond the reach of disciplll 
mander within the yard, theli 
attaching solely to their patron who ap| 
iheui to perform political tnd so tho 

navy yard becomes mainly a sort of d-^pot of 



18 



election managers, who set the civil police at 
defiance on election day, and open the way 
to ballot stuffing, and who, through the au- 
thority of their patrons with the Secretary, 
derange the police of the naval establishment, 
while billeted upon it in the interval of elec- 
tions. Proof is adduced, in the report of the 
Committee oti Expenditures, pointing to the 
mischief of thus subjecting the navy, gathered 
at the city stations, to abuses to subserve party 
interests ; but the most striking proof is to be 
found in the report of a commission of distin- 
guished officers, who have passed from one 
navy yard to another, to look into the causes 
of the decay of energy, discipline, and economy, 
which once characterized our establishments. 
At New York, Boston, Norfolk, and Philadel- 
phia, they find their original vigor sapped by 
one of prevailing disorder, and the cause of it 
the malaria of politics. 

The Board, after going through, item by 
item, all the abuses which have deranged the 
whole system, thus say: 

" In conclusion, the board would beg leave to recommend 
that the efforts now being made by the officers in the New 
York navy yard to maintain discipline, introduce economy 
and efficiency., and break up the system of political patron- 
age, bo sustained by the head of the Department. They are 
convinced that no navy yard can be made efficient, or to 
serve the purposes for which it was intended, unless the 
commandant of the yard is supported in the exercise of his 
legitimate authority, and the minor departments are held 
strictly responsible, and the heads of them liable to dis- 
missal for any act subversive of the discipline by which our 
naval establishments should be governed. 

" Wo have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obe- 
dient servants. 

F. H. GREGORY, Senior Officer. 

G. J. VAN BRUNT, Captain U. S. Navy. 
C. H. POOR, Covi'r U. S. Navy. 

JOHN R. TUCKER, Com'r U. S. Navy. 
DAVID D. porter, Lieutenant. 
'• Hon. Isaac Toucey, Secretary of the Navy." 

This is the appeal they urge in respect to 
the other navy yards. These honest officers are 
sensible that an unscrupulous Secretary can 
harass them in their profession, and thwart 
them in their interests and comforts and hon- 
orable ambition for admonishing him of the 
fatal influence he has infused into the naval 
service of his country, but in the pride they feel 
in the glory of the flag and its constellation of 
stars which they look up to as the emblem of 
their country, they do not hesitate to point 
again and again to the vile mire into which he 
has dragged it. 

They go to Norfolk, and find things there 
equally bad. They sum up the abuses there 
in this way : 

" The master workmen, considering themselves necessary 
to their political friends, and being assured of protection have, 
assumed a bearing independent of proper authority out of 
koopmg with their position, and not to be found in any other 
navy yard. It is very apparent to the board, although they 
have not taken much evidence on this point, that the leaders 
of a majority of theshops are politicians, and have around 
them a & t of men who are selected as much for their politi- 
cal as mechanical character." 

They come to Philadelphia, and find the navy 
yard in a commotion. They point to the cause : 

"According to an estimate made by persons, in evidence 
the extra number of men unnecessarily employed in the 



Philadelphia yard would, if cut down, be a saving of over 
S100,000 a year, which would add one flno ship to the navy 
) early j and as an increase of the navy is lhe great uesicl- 
eralum it is desirable that the reduction be made as soon 
as possible. 

11 P"lilieians have tio much <wai/ 
" The present stale of things existing in this yard is, no 
doubt, owing to officers yielding from time 1o lime 10 po- 
litical influences, which the Government alone had the 
power to regulate." 

This may be called Mr. Florence's navy 
yard. Say the officers : 

"The master blacksmith is a politician, and admits it, 
and there is evidence on record to show ihat he does not 
always employ the most efficient kind of men ; moreover, 
his shop is crowded with a larger number of persons than 
is ju-tifie.l hy the quantity of work goi isr o v here. He has 
on occasions been known to defeat the effi us of officers 
of the yard to keep nvn off, and admits that he used his 
influence v\ iih a member of Congress, in Washington, to 
have thirty men put on, when it was denied him by the 
proper authority of lhe yard. There are now in his de- 
partment lO-i men, with foreman, quarterman and a larger 
gang of men than is employed in f\iew York." 

This introduction of men into the yards to 
bear down on elections is developed in the of- 
ficial lists of the hands employed. In Jan., 
1857, the number in the Philadelphia navy 
yard was 574; to meet the necessities of Mr. 
Florence's election in October following, the 
number was 1,722. 

All here is of a piece. It is all election ma- 
chinery. The President himself did not hesi- 
tate to come to the rescue, when Mr. Florence's 
district was about to drive him out of this 
stronghold which belongs to him in virtue of 
his seat in Congress. It was on this occasion 
that the President interposed, and set aside the 
rights of the lowest bidder, (the. Novelty Works, 
New York,) to give the contract for the ma- 
chinery of a sloop to Merrick & Sons, Phila- 
delphia, for the reasons shown in this corres- 
pondence, which fell into the hand of the Com- 
mittee : 

*' Philadelphia, September 13, 1859. 

" Dear Sir : I venture to suggest to you the importance 
of awarding the eontraeis for the machinery of lhe sloop 
now building at the navy yard at this time and if it can 
be done without prejudice to the public service, to Mer- 
rick & Sons Theirs is the only establishment in the first 
district which employs a large number of mechanics ; a' 
this time, 390; wtien in full work. 450. 

''The managing partners (Mr. M., sen , being absent, in 
bad health) are lull of energy, straining every nerve to 
keep their force during this depression, and. in so far as 1 
know, the only ol i Whigs o- any influence in that district 
who aro in favor of the re-eleciion o Col Uorence. 

"I know, from former experience, the value of that in- 
fluence, and feel persuaded that it is lhe interest of the 
Democratic party to incre-ise it. 

"The first district will, I hope, be carried in any event 
but with that shop at work, full handed, two weeks prior 
to the election, the result would I think, be placed ne- 
yond all doubt. With much re-pect, 

'The President. W C. PATTERSON." 

This letter was sent to the Secretary of the 
Navy, by the President, with this endorsement : 

» " September 15, 1358. 

"The enclosed letter from Colonel Patterson, of Phila- 
delphi i, is submitied to the attention of lhe Secretary of 
ihe Navy. j ^ 

'The undersigned regard this as a serious oflence- It 
is the duty of tne Secretary to determine which ot the hid- 
ders was -the lowest responsible bidder,' and to award 
io him the contract. It i a judicial act The rights di 
parties under he law, and the rights of the Government, 
were involved in ihe award. 

" If the President had suggested io a judge of the United 
feta'es courts that he rend r a judgment in 'avor of one of 



19 



the parties liligant in a cause pending before him, be- 
cause that judgment would aid in the election of a parly 
favorite, or would contribute to the success of the Demo- 
cratic parly, the general voice of the people would de- 
mand his impeachment. Is it a less serious otTeno- wbeu 
this suggestion is made hy the President to thf Secretary 
of the Navy ? The judge is beyond the power of ih 
President; the Secretary is within his power. Each is 
required to perform judicial functions. The soggprtion 
by the President of corrupt motives to either, is equally 
dangerous, and is more likely to succeed with nn officer 
whose tenure of office is the will of the President." 

The scraps here inserted from official reports 
show that the House Committee, the House of 
Representatives itself, and the board of officers, 
all condemn the combination of political in- 
trigue and corruption with the naval service of 
the country, making the latter subservient to 
the selfish schemes of the civil office-holders, at 
the expense of its usefulness, and the high 
character it had earned under other Administra- 
tions. 

The proneness of the present Administra- 
tion to turn the naval as well as the military 
service to account in creating jobs and patron- 
age to gain another term in the Presidency is 
seen in its Paraguay as well as its Utah war. 
A brief sketch of the Paraguay war is worth 
considering, in this view, as particularly char- 
acteristic of the Buchanan policy. 

Hopkins, who got up this war, was a partner 
in a Rhode Island trading company, which 
sent him to Paraguay, to establish a cigar 
business there, obtaining the place of Consul 
from our Government to dignify his business. 
He was always, it seems, from his personal 
history, as a school-boy, a midshipman, and 
trader, a most obnoxious person, pregnant with 
quarrels everywhere, and in the semi-barbarous 
Republic of Paraguay he managed to put the 
whole community, President and all, into dis- 
tress about a trifle. This is a brief of what 
transpired, taken from the account of Captain 
Page, of the Water Witch, who interposed in 
the affair on the side of the Consul, who had, 
from his official character, involved the inter- 
ests of the country in his private quarrel. 

" Of the difficulty, I have no idea of entering 
' into detail, further than to state that the imme- 
' diate cause of its outbursting at that particular 
' time was an assault made by a soldier on the 
' person of the brother of Mr. Hopkins, while ri- 
' ding with a lady, also a foreigner. The man was 
' driving cattle to the city, and, on being met or 
' overtaken by the riding party, the herd was 
1 dispersed into the wood. There was no per- 
' sonal injury to the lady or the gentleman, but 
' the insult was to be considered and justly 
' made a subject of complaint. President Lo- 
' pez took exception to the language in which 
' the complaint was made; a paper war ensued ; 
' crimination followed recrimination. The con- 
' sular exequatur was revoked, and the wrath 
' of the Chief Magistrate extended to the mem- 
' bers of the American Company, of which Mr. 
' Hopkins was agent. Decrees, (or Jiandos,) 
' intended to embarrass their operations, were 



' issued, and at last the cigar factory wa 
' closed." 

The decree which produced this happy resu' 
for Mr. Hopkins, (who now claims iicmlj 
million of dollars for indemnity,) as given b_ 
Captain i ' 

" .1 ' / .i>rx must iake out a lu'etue i 
;>■ in any eOWUfrffll Of mdut tri d }>u 
.suit." 
The Captain adds: "This last article was 
reasonable, but the Company, though 
on for u year, had sol before been require <1 1 
take out a license ; and when Mr. Hopkil 
made an application foi it, in the < 1, meter 
' general agent.' bavin • 
for the 6tamped paper, it was n-fu-> 1, on tl 
ground of his being general agent. Tl 
was objectionable] ild not be n 

niscd. He must apply aa 'agent,' and i 
' general.' " '• I am to thai da s< 

tain) mystified liy this phase ofthe difficult 
There waa but cue General in P . 
son-in law ofthe President ; but by what pi 
of reasoning the title of the ' general ageot' re- 
flected upon the head of the military arm of 
the Government, I am unabi neither 

do I see why it should not be relinquish! I." 
It seems that Hopkins, who was simply an 
"agent," took the title, and with it tin- as- 
sumption, of General, which the President) 
only understanding in the military .-• 
sidered as arrqgating equality with his heir, 
whose dignity it was meant only to deride — an 
offensive interpretation, which the quarrel of the 
Consul with tlic President ;,n/ /,■-:. d. At this 
stage ofthe controversy, Captain 1'iu"' arrived, 
and "found Mr. Hopkins determined, by reason 
' ofthe course ofthe Government, to leave the 
' country, with the members of the Company, 
' and such of their effects as could be couveni- 
' eutly removed." 

The Captain interposed to restore amity. 
He says: " I called on President Lopes; was 
courteously received, and discussed the diffi- 
culty between the Government find Mr. 11 >; 
kins at some length. The President said the 
soldier [who had insulted the broiler of Hop- 
kins] had been severely punished by the in- 
fliction of three hundred stripes in ' running 
the gauntlet' through the regimenl to which he 
was attached. He complained of the intemper- 
ate language of Mr. Hopkins. It was, he said, 
insulting to him, and he had, in consequence, 
withdrawn his exequatur. That the agent, Mr. 
Hopkins, was personally obnoxious to him, and 
he would not consent to his i Dgagiug in any 
business in the country." Hut tin- i 
assured him "that the American Com] 
would be allowed to carry on its operati Ml un- 
der a guaranty o 

from the possible recurrence of insult i i 
nity." The Captain continues : " I Wt 
Hopkins by appointment, sad informi d him of 
the result of my interview with tie 
He theu informed me that the bu-. 



20 



Company had been broken up by the action of 
the Government, regardless of all pre-existing 
contracts 5 and that he would hold it responsi- 
ble for the damages, looking to the United 
States Government for the enforcement of the 
• reclamation ; that under the circumstances he 
wished to withdraw from Paraguay, but that no 
trading vessel would take them, the masters 
Fearing that the odium in which he was held 
by the Government would be visited on 
hem." 

It is the game of some of our ill- doing tra- 
;rs among the petty neighboring Republics, 
id especially among our Indian tribes, to get 
> difficulties, provoke injuries, and then get 
the strong hand of our Government to extort 
demnitics. All the fraucluleut claims set up 
raiust Mexico, in which our people speculate, 
e for the most part of this sort, the claimants 
ilculating on the avidity of our contiguous 
tates for acquisition of Mexican territory, and 
lying, in the event of quarrel between the 
overuments, that they may get their asserted 
■mands paid out of the United States Treasury, 
as so much in liquidation of the amount to be 
paid for ceded territory. It is so with Indian 
annuities, which are often swallowed up in in- 
demnities. Hopkins is not too scrupulous to 
be an expert in this mode of speculation, and 
he was dexterous enough to get out of the 
country at the expense of our Government, 
which he also involved in an expense of many 
millions, to get at his reclamation. Captain 
Page removed his difficulty about removal. 
He told him, " I will see the President ; and 
if na arrangement can be made for your leaving 
the country by a trading vessel, I will receive 
the members of the Company and their effects 
on board the Water Witch, and convey them 
to Corrientes — this being the point at which we 
wished to establish them." 

The Captain called on the President, and he 
said he should have the " permit " asked by 
Page. But alas I another difficulty arose. The 
Captain explains it : "A vessel was engaged, 
passports obtained, and I concluded that all 
was satisfactorily arranged for the departure of 
the Company, when one of the Company came 
on board the Water Witch, and complained of 
tresh insults by the chief of police. The Cap- 
tain went to the President. The policeman 
was sent for, charged by the President, and 
denied every word, rising to his feet as he 
spoke." 

Then came another difficulty : " On applying 
for the ' permit' to ship the goods, it had been 
refused until Hopkins should surrender the 
papers, deeds, &c, which secured to the Com- 
pany certain property purchased and paid for 
by the Company." 

Hereupon, Capt. Page took pen in hand, 
i; telling the President what would be my 
course for the relief of the Company, if they 
were not allowed to depart by the usual mode 
of conveyance." The Secretary of Foreign 



Relations desired, by "verbal nressage-^o the 
Captain's clerk, " to take my notes, (the Cap- 
tain's,) and requested me to have them trans- 
lated. I replied, verbally, that I must corres- 
pond with the Government in my own lan- 
guage, and would not allow my letters to be 
translated by any one associated with me." 
This bit of etiquette brought about the war. 
The notes were returned to the Captain. He 
(Capt. Page) sent them back, aud informed 
the Captain of the Port that he " should receive 
them (the Company) and their effects onboard, 
and leave Asuncion at a certain hour. Scarce- 
ly had the announcement been made, when 
President Lopez issued the permit, showing 
conclusively that his Excellency was fully in- 
formed of the contents of my notes, if he did 
not understand English. It was late. The 
Americans were in the act of coming on board 
before its issue was made known. It expe- 
dited matters, however, for it was accom- 
panied by an order to the Port Captain to 
afford them every facility in shipping their 
goods." 

Capt. Page's last note had produced great 
alarm. The Captain says: "Not a soul was 
abroad ; not a man, cart, or horse, was to be 
seen, except a few conveying the effects of. the 
American Company to the beach. What was 
feared ? " The following explanation was made : 
" Last night, the President called a consulta- 
tion of his advisers, at which your letter was 
considered. The wise heads thought they saw 
in it another Greytown affair. His Excellency 
thought that, as heavy bodies move slowly, it 
would be prudent to be prepared ; so he sent 
for a machinist to examine his carriage, and 
see that all was in good running condition. 
Orders were issued that none should appear 
in the plaza or streets after eleven o'clock this 
morning, aud not a horse or cart, except those 
engaged in transporting the goods of the 
American Company, was to be seen." " The 
Brazilian Consul, an amiable, gentlemanly 
man, came on board the Water Witch, and 
expressed, with much anxiety, the hope that I 
was not really about to fire into the town. I 
assured him I had no such intention," &c. 
" The preparations of the steamer, with her 
three howitzers planted on board, as a protec- 
tion against savages, was simply a duty to 
meet any exigency that might occur." 

Thus the effect of Capt. Page's diplomacy 
and preparations for action on board his ship 
had inspired terror enough to make him vain. 
" I had, it is true, resolved, that if the property 
of the Americans was retained by the Presi- 
dent, or placed beyond the reach of our guns, 
to return the compliment by capturing his 
navy at Tres Bocas," &c. " On reaching Tres 
Bocas, we observed an unusual array of 
soldiers and the little navy of five vessels, with 
their armament, ranging from two to six guns, 
all doubly manned, and ready, as the President 
had said, ' to salute or fight.' The vessels were} 



21 



moored so close to the bank, that a plank from 
each would have enabled the personnel of the 
marine to make an excursion into the interior 
of the country at tbe shortest possible notice. 
On the deck of the flag ship, a prominent figure 
in the picture, stood my old friend, the Ad- 
miral. Salutes would have been dangerous ; 
for, from the evident state of hostile prepara- 
tion, the first flash of one of the ir guns might 
have been returned by a fire from our how- 
itzer, without delay for explanation. We passed 
slowly on, and in silence, many a soul on the 
Water Witch devoutly hoping, perhaps, that 
some brave son of Paraguay would provoke a 
fight." 

Now it is very evident, from the panic in the 
town, that the President and his people had 
discovered in the Captain's note, (which is not 
given in his volume here quoted,) and from 
the bearing of the Water Witch, that there was 
a spirit somewhere " to provoke a fight." Capt. 
Page ingenuously admits that, up to this time, 
he had no pretext for it; "as it had yielded 
every point, as the Americans were personally 
safe and on board the Water Witch, and the 
'permit' had been issued to facilitate the ship- 
ment of the goods, there was no possible excuse 
for so extreme a measure. I was not at all 
ambitious of the achievement of firing into a 
town, destroying the property of Unoffending 
citizens, perhaps the lives of women and chil- 
dren, and disturbing the course of a Govern- 
ment with which I had been directed to treat 
for commercial intercourse." 

Nevertheless, the threatening note which 
Captain Page had addressed to the Presi- 
dent, his refusal to translate it, and sending 
back those addressed to him, together with the 
alarming preparations ou board the Water 
Wiich, where Hopkins, the vindictive enemy 
of the President, had taken his place, filled the 
town with apprehensions of this formidable 
stranger, which could easily have taken his 
flotilla and burned his town. He therefore, 
ou the 3d of October, issued this decree : 

" Art. 1. In the navigation of the rivers of ihe Repub- 
lic, foreign vessels of war are excluded. 

'"2. The exp oration? of the rivers of Upper Paraguay, 
which are embraneri within the territories of tho Repub- 
lic orof other neighboring Slates, cannot be made mrough 
the J^owcr Paraguay pending the settlement of limits 
with the neighboring Powers, Brazil and Bolivia." 

These decrees would undoubtedly be within 
competency of England, France, or the United 
States, in regard to waters within their bound- 
aries. Notwithstanding this interdict, Capt. 
Page sent the Water Witch into the Parana. 
Here is his account of the result : 

"Lieutenant Jeffers had advanced but a short di^ance 
above the junction of the Parana and Paraguay, platting 
the work as he progressed, when, from very deep water, 
the vessel was run upon a sand-bank, the lead :tt the 
gangway indicating no material change in the depth. 
YM|ile in the act of getting the steamer afloat, a boat 
came alongside from a fort on the Paraguay shore, when 
was a flag-staff, but no flag llyinj, and presented a paper 
to Lieutenant Jeder?, who returned it to the messenger, 
informing him that lie did not read Spanish. This, with 



the substitution of the word : Spanish ' for ' English." was 
Presidenl I. ope/> reply to my communication ia behalt 
ol Americans in Asuncion He observed -orue but'o 

an.! activity ai ihe fort: and, lo be prepared for any 

emergency, put the Teasel in the bcsl stale of defence he 

could, but scarcely adinitfin- to hnii«elf the uossitnlily of 

attack. 

'■ st„- was got (float; and on •mkinc ,ne pilot where 
lay the chann I be u hesitatingly said thai it »■< near 
the Paraguay shore. ! ut he h id suBpe*ed Hie river waa 
high enough '.. en iblc tbe Water u , 
shoals neat ae left bank, and made t 
informing the commanding oflaci The pilot, like n any 
oUier Argcntinas of the same class, looked apoa I'ara- 
guay as a semi-civilized country, and as to 

put a great distance between Ihe Water IVHeb. an I 
Itapira. ii ■• .vn« ordered to change in. cot rss of ihe 

and the na i 
explain' d to linn, thai he mi hi 

aacfl of keeping In mid-channel iviow* 

ity to the Parnguay shore, or whether there wa» water 
tnoin-h oufide of it. When the VI ■ was 

within close shot, two oi 

fired from Ihe fori, in (piiek ■ . . | t, v a 

shot. At what pan oi ihe vessel it was aimed, I can 
only judge by fraetdenl i. . 
l> partment, where be magnanimously lays Ii m , 

-oai to 'pass ahead ' I; i daa 

mark, and was unfortun re, for n i 

through (in- after pert, cut away the | killed 

the helmsman. Lieutenant J'Keri had disregarded the 
blank cartridges, and up to this tune had wilhhel 
fire. Indeed, ins means of defence, with thn 
one twenty four pounder, and t.v 

small against B brick or -tone i,irt Hut, when this shell 
same, he returned it ai rapidly as thr reduced nun 
his officers and crow and tbe d 
helm wou'd admit. The accuracy o!" ihe fire ws 
in cutting away the flii;htuff, and in the shrapnel! gra- 
zing the low wall ; for the mo null i! on bar- 
bette. \\'e learned afterwards thai severs i 
ans were killed ; some reports said tlntn others /■ 

So ended the affair, which is here presented 
in the light in which Hopkins and Page gave 
it. What President Lope/, had to say mt him- 
self was not material to President Bucha] an. 
The sequel shows that the latter engrafted on 
the facts thus reported a messaj 
denying the validity of the decree of I 
against navigating the river, because only ono 
side of it belonged to him, and beCMM tho 
Water Witch "was not a vessel of war," and 
did not come within the decree, and because 
citizens of the United States "had their prop- 
erty seized and taken away from them.'* The 
two last facts stated by Mr. Buchanan are not 
supported by Captain Page's statement : and 
the first point, as matter or law, will hardly be 
admitted, if a nation, holding '>f a 

rivor with a fortress, sees it approached l>y an 
armed vessel, which vessel refuses to receive a 
message by a flag, and refuses to pause on the 
firing of blank cartridges. Lopez ordered " a 
shot ahead," as is common to bl 1 to. 

Fearing, from observation of what was passing 
on the Water Witch, that the ai ring 

on a battle, he sent a countermand oi hi; of led 
It did not arrive iu '■'- ; this it would 

seem that what occurred was the effect of a 
double accident. In proof of tl 
Lopez, the fact that he Bent to thr- witlow nf tho 
man killed $10,000 gratuity may I 
These circumstances are spoken of by Cum. 
Shubrick, whose i s ''' and humanity 

closed the war so honorably ; and as our ' I 
eminent sought no indemnities fcr its vast ex- 



22 



penditnres, it would seem to have been satis- 
fied with the explanation. 

It is very dear, from Mr. Page's statement, 
that means were at hand to compel Lopez to 
make prompt atonement for whatever wrong 
he had committed, or to punish it to the ut- 
most, without resorting to this expensive expe- 
dition. Captain Page descended the river, met 
Com. Salter at Montevideo, with the Savannah 
flag-ship and the Germantown, and in his note, 
18th April, says: 

" Have had a conversation with the Commodore since 
my visit of 31st, and urged the propriety of Bending the 
Germantown un, towed by the Wider Witch, to knock 
down Itapira Ciptuin Lynch, in a nob 'e, generous spirit, 
which I lully appreciate, hail proposed to the Commo- 
dore to take ihe Ge mant -wn up, or relinquish 'he com 
mund of the ship to me for that purpose." 

The Commodore said : 

" I cannot ni-ve in t"is matter. The affair is referred 
to the Government, and I shall await instructions." 

Captain Page's comment is : 
"The Fort Itapira ought to have been knocked down, 
and we should now be even with the Faraguay Govern- 
ment. I begged but for two guns, atul I would havepledged 
my life in the effort.''' 1 

This is the whole case. Three vessels lay 
at the mouth of the river, awaiting the Presi- 
dent's instructions, the least of which, furnished 
with two additional shell guns, might have 
produced submission, or the destruction of the 
town, the fort, and Lopez's whole flotilla. 
Neither alternative suited Mr. Buchanan. It 
presented a fine opportunity to carry out his 
policy at home. It develops itself. After pre- 
senting the case to Congress as recounted, he 
adds, very modestly : 

'• I am constrained to consider the attack upon her 
(the Water Wiieli) as unjustifiable, and as calling for 
satisfaction from the Paraguayan Government. A de- 
mand for these purposes will be made in a firm but con- 
ciliatory spir t This will the more probably be granted, 
if the Exe. u.ive shall have authority to use other means 
in the event of a refusal." 

Well, he had " other means" enough to back 
a conciliatory message to Lopez at the mouth 
of the river, and to blow up his little Republic 
in case of contumacy. But that would have 
been a short job, and far away. President 
Buchanan's policy required jobs at home; 
and his skill in creating them out of this affair, 
and using them in aid of his political manage- 
ment, will add another trophy to his reputation. 
The President and his Secretary Toucey 
thought it indispensable to accompany a de- 
mand " for satisfaction," in a firm, conciliatory 
spirit, with a fleet of fifteen vessels of war! ! 1 
Seven of these were steam ships, chartered 
from the merchant service, on terms which 
made it necessary to buy them, having cost 
more than they were worth in refitting and 
alterations to bear cannon — the refitting 
amounting to $141,020.86 at first, and accu- 
mulating ever since. There were twenty-six 
small vessels employed in transporting coal. 
Cost of the coal, $201,094.02. 

The flag-ship (the Sabine) which conveyed 
Lhe Commissioner, Hon. Mr. Bowliu, cost in 
provisions alone $45,454.50. The purchase 



of the chartered vessels cost $289,000 ; but 
the Secretary of the Navy furnishes only some 
of the extra charges incurred by the expedi- 
tion, in reply to the resolution requesting the 
Committee on Expenditures to inquire into 
and report on the expenditures of the Paraguay 
expedition. The Secretary answers, laconi- 
cally : " It is impossible to give an exact state- 
ment of the total expense of the expedition ; " 
and there he drops it. It must be guessed 
from aggregates. The present term of four 
years more than doubles Mr. Van Buren's 
term. The expense of the naval service of 
Mr. Buchanan's past two years is almost 
twenty-seven millions, doubling that of Mr. 
Madison's naval expenses during the war with 
Great Britain, when the glory of our flag of 
stars illuminated the ocean. 

But there are circumstances which prove 
that Mr. Buchanan's war upon Paraguay was 
not for glory, but to furnish means of corruption. 
It has appeared already how it has poured 
its current into and through our naval depart- 
ments. The charter and repairs of the leven 
steamboats afterwards purchased, added to the 
tide which preparation of the national vessels for 
war began to raise. But, outside of the political 
laboratories, this war gave motion to consid- 
erable political influence along the seaboard. 
Mr. Hopkins and his Rhode Island incor- 
porated trading company were called into 
action for the Administration. Then Crom- 
well & Co., who sold out their line of merchant 
steamers for war ships, have an establishment 
in New York, and one in Baltimore, and traded 
all along South. This company, in selling out 
their old ships, were set to build more, and 
were thus put in control of a multitude of 
voters. Then two hundred thousaud dollars 
spent in the coal mines gave a money impulse 
there for the Administration. Then the twen- 
ty six vessels employed in the transportation of 
the coal would call out an expenditure among 
the masters which might be made to tell all 
along shore. In addition, Mr. Toucey found a 
job account in the purchase of the steamers, af- 
ter they were all reported by their officers, after 
trial, as wholly unfit for w»r vessels. " Their 
slightness of construction ; " " helpless condition 
at sea;" "imperfect machinery;" "patched 
boilers, (one with one hundred patches,) much 
burned ; " " unmanageable under canvas ; " 
" many weaknesses ; " " ordinary pumps would 
not keep afloat;" "engines broken down;" 
" vessels unable to carry a battery, from want 
of speed, and exposure of machinery, not at all 
adapted to purposes of war ; " " unsafe to make 
a voyage of any great distance on the ocean " — 
all this, and much more represented by the 
officers in their correspondence with the Sec- 
retary, while on their voyage, creeping from 
island to island, and the ports along the conti- 
nent, to river La Plata, could not deter him from 
purchasing these ships of war. Com. Shubrick 
says, if they had been with him on the ocean 



23 



when the storm struck his flag-ship, the Sabine, 
that all would have gone down. To persons un- 
acquainted with the recent management of the 
navy in politics, such a purchase would seem in- 
explicable. Those acquainted with the abuses in 
the navy yards know that the worthlessness of 
these vessels were tbeir recommendation. They 
are rebuilt at the navy yard, under appropriations 
for repairs, when they can be no longer patch- 
fed up. Congress feels bound to allow estimates 
for repairs, when they would not vote for new 
ships; but ships are sometimes thus made new 
without a stick of the old, and bearing nothing 
but the name, and even this is occasionally 
changed. 

And this increase of the navy, in leaky, rot- 
ten, worm-eaten, worn-out merchant steamers, 
is all that results from the many millions sunk' 
in the Paraguay war, if the commission given 
to the President's friend, the Hon. Cave John- 
con, does not produce something more. He is 
to hunt up pretexts for an indemnity to Hop- 
kins & Company for insulting and. aliena- 
ting a young and rising Republic. The nation 
must lose its trade by extorting near a million 
from Para-nay to satisfy the General agent for 
being refused permission to sell his cigars, 
probably only " a beggarly account of empty 
Doxes." 

The Utah war has ended quite as ignomini- 
ously. Kansas, the President confesses to Mr. 
Walker in his private letter, on opening the 
campaign, was its primary object. Until "you 
are out of the woods," he tells the Governor, 
you shall keep Harney and his army. " Kari- 
sas is vastly more important to us at this mo- 
went than Utah." All the war could accom- 
plish here, was to exclude the State from the 
Union ; he could not enslave it. 

What has he done for Utah ? The Secretary 
of War, in his report to Congress at the session 
before the last, alludes to the demands which 
had been made on " that body for appropria- 
ting the large sums of money necessary for 
crushing the treason at a single blow." Now 
that the ten millions have been spent, and the 
blow struck, what is the result? The Secretary 
tells us in his last report: 

•• miairs in the : Trrri'ory oi crncb ■<_>....!.• -. . , .....*-• ..^ 
at the date of rny last annual report. The uriny is inact- 
ive, and Manils in Ihfl attitude of a menacing Ibrce 
toward; a cmqucred a:id sullen people. I am satisfied 
that the preservation of right and justice through the 
means of any jurisprudence known or recognised by the 
people of the United Stales, is impossible in ihat Terri- 
tory. It is governed practtt aliy by a system which is 
in totul disregard of the laws or Constitutions of the laud. 
The laws of the Mormon church and the will of lit- m r- 
acuy are alone, potential there beyon t a mere outward 
show of acquiescence in Federal authority, they are as 
irresponsible to it as any foreign nation. 

There is in the present altitude, of ailurs scarcely any 
necessity for the presence of trcops in Utah, and they 
will be otherwise disposed of in the coming ssaso . 
There are no complaints of Indian hostilities towards the 
Mormon people. All other Territories and people upon 
our vast fio.itters sutler from Indian depredations, bu1 
the Mormon people enjoy an immunity from all these 
outrages. For thi protection of these people against In- 
dians, there is no necessity for the presence of a Fir ™le 
soldier. Mimcrs and robberies of the most atrocious 



character hive been perpetrated in '.he Territory u"On 
emigrants from the S'ates;ourneying towards the Vacific, 
and in some of the m< si shockire instances by white 
men disgui'ed as Indians. The general imprv ->ion. so 
far as I have been able to ascertain it mnn"g those hav- 
ing opportunity n> kr.ow. is. that these murders are the 
work of the Mormon people themselves, sanction! 1 n 
not directed by the authority of the Mifflnn church."' 

The Mountain Meadow massacre, in which 
one hundred and twenty peace able 

emigrants fell — a butchery extending through 
five days, within a few miles <•(' the Mormon 
settlements, leading Mormons looking on, and 
after receiving the spoil from the Indians, till 
detailed in Mr. Forney's f Indian superintend- 
ent) report — makes it certain that the Secretary 
is well founded in the statement that Mor- 
mons are the instigators in this war against 
emigration across the central part of.tbe conti- 
nent. The butchery of Captain Qnnnison and 
his party of explorers to open this way, it is 
almost certain was tin i r work. But besides 
this participation in Indian atrocit' 
may be only the crime of a few confederate 
Mormons, the Secretary thus charges the whole 
community : 

" After the open nets of war by the Morm-m people 
against the UtHied states, ,,, seizing the pr.p i lion trains 
of our army and destroy ing them by fire. ■ d Bleating and 
driving oil" the herds of eattie and horses belonging, to the 
command, although these were essential as everybody 
supposed, to the maintenance of our troops, and ihi ir 
protection against starvat on, these people continued to 
manifest every proof of afixed determination to push their 
treason to the extremity of bloodshed and war." 

Then a long list of Mormon violations of the 
Constitution and laws is given, to justify the 
Administration in the sigual vengeance it had 
taken, of which the Secretary seems proud : 

"This movoment upon this Territory was d. msj ded 
by the :ru.r;tl sentiment of the eon itry— was due to a vin- 
dication of the laws and Constitution — and v.-.\* essential 
io demonstrate the power of the Federal Government 
to chastise iasuborduation and quell rebellion," &o. 

The report does not tell how this insubordi- 
nation was chastised and rebellion quelled, but 
goes on to say : < 

"These people, however, still evince a spirit of in- 
subordination and moody discontent. The necessity 
which called for the presenci of the tr h will 

require a Slro I 'o be kept there." 

Now, what was the chastisement of the trea- 
son, the bloodshed, the robberies, the confla- 
grations, the attempt to starve a whole army ? 
what was the spirit in which our Executive, 
with a powerful army at his bidding, r> bilked 
all this? Defied by Brigham Xonng at every 
step in their progress, our poor-spirited Pi 
dent submits at last to beg tin' way for his 
army to .Salt Lake City, without encounter, 
through the intervention of a private citizen, 
Thomas L. Kane, the brother or the Arctic ex- 
plorer. The President writes a letter of cre- 
dence to this envoy, but, with hie usual duplici- 
ty, disavowing that he did "send any agent to 
visit them in behalt of the Government." This 
letter is a master piece ot Ruchanan diploma- 
cy. Mr. Kane gncs to the Mormons, and lets 
them know what vengeance awaited till their 
crimes. They were to have, in the first place, 
a general amnesty for all their crimes — cover- 



24 



ing up the blood of the innocents shed on the 
Mountain Meadow, that of Captain Gunnison's 
exploring party, the robbery and 'fire of the 
army trains, and, in a word, all the treason, 
from first to last — Young on his part promising 
nothing, but .allowing Governor Powell and 
Ben MeOullough (the commissioners sent to 
him after Ivane had obtained leave) to say 
"that it was agreed that the officers civil and 
military of tin; United States should peaceably 
and without resistance enter the Territory of 
Utah, and discharge, unmolested, all their offi- 
ciul didieg." Brigham did not even sign this 
agreement, but merely adds a note, admitting 
that it was il said in said conference." 

Now, the Secretary of War admits in both 
of his reports, since the agreed ease, that Brig 
ham Young has acted on his mental reserva- 
tion, and so acted that neither the laws nor Con- 
Lion have been permitted to have any force 
i". t!e T frtl ry. f/bat the Mo*raoii<» - "'keep 
up strictly .iieir organization, which has I 
object and end the complete exclusion of Fed- 
eral authority from all participation iu the 
Governmental affairs in the Territory beyond 
a mere hollow show." This he tells Congress 
at its session before the last, to show that it 
must appropriate money to keep the army there, 
and keep up "the mere hollow show." in the 
report to the last session he even gives this up, 
and proposes to take the army away, and sur- 
render the Territory to the Mormons, 
time the Mormons are grown rich on the mar- 
ket the army has afforded them, and are Bpecu 
lating on all the spoils obtained in exchanges. 
Fur instance, they bought hundreds of wagons 
used as transports for the army and il 
visions, for $20 each; they now sell the 
v. ins, to transporttbe army away, at $150 each. 

Now, the question is, why does our Govern- 
ment sllbmit to Young's Government, instead 
of bringing his to submission? The answer 
is, his is a slave State. The army was r 
not to subdue a slave State, but to make Kan- 
Gas a slave State. Young has not only i 
lished negro slavery, but has established B 
system that must end in enslaving the I 
and dependent of the white race. He can have 
but one wife at a time of the sixty he h«ik*«*» 
such. The rest are slaves. This plurality 
means nothing but concubinage, and is in 
a denial of the rights of wedlock to lho.-e who 
are. euslaved. In other sections, the rights of 
marriage in slaves are denied or broken at 
pleasure, in Mormondom, a man may have as 
many wives as he can buy ; and as this makes 
it literally a matter of money, he may dispose 
of them, without regard to what mankind gen- 
erally consider sacred ties. This allies both 
white aud black slavery in Utah in tome sort 
with negro slavery iu the South; aud from this 
sympathy of institutions, the Senate, at the 
last session, put down the bill of the House of 
Representatives, declaring polygamy a crime, 
and punishing it as a violation of the morals 
and laws of the country. The executive power 
at Washington, which indeed in all its branches 



is in suoaerviency to the South, understands 
their sympathy; and hence its leaning to the 
crimes of Brigham Young's Government. 
Beace, while the Secretary declares that this 
Government is the accomplice of the Indian 
murderers who beset the path of the emigrant 
.hi every central route to the Pacific, the troops 
are removed because the Mormons do not need 
de.ie.nce against the Indians, aud thus, in block- 
iivg the middle way to California, are serving 
the interests of the slave States, which desire 
to drive the emigration into the ox-bow route 
the Mississippi, across through desert 

ma, and up again north along the Pacific 
to San Francisco. The Postmaster Geueral 
violated the law, and pays $o0t),000 a year to 
change to this put of the- way course the post 
route contemplated by the law. This was done 
to give its direction to the railroad across the 
Continent. The Ex in this de- 

and hence the middle of I 
surrendered to the Mormons aud their savage 
allies. 

And this is all our gain from the Mormon 
war, which made the annual military expenses 
of the Government equal to thos$ of the war 
v.ith Great Britain, and would have 'raised 
them four millions higher, if the Republican 
[any had not voted down the demand of the 
.i increase of the standing arm; 
by the addition of four more regiments of reg- 

each year. 
This would have raised Mr. Buchanan's army 
outlay above t .eutv-three millions, very nearly 
the total expei 1 ..-;" of the ei tire G iverranent un- 
der Mr. Van Buren. The four regiments were 

down, and Mr. Buchanan doubtless would 
give this as a reason for leaving Utah in the 
of Brigham Young, as Secretary Floyd 
admits it is. it' Congress had not offered the 
President a force of volunteers to bring him to 
obedience or drive him from the country. The 
Executive refused the volunteers. They had 
driven these Ishmaelites out of Missouri and 
Illinois, and if permitted to drive them out of 
Utah we should have one slave State less. 

In the passages commented on in this paper, 
the Administration has written its own history. 

reluctant witnesses of its own party. They show 
it to be the creature of the slave power, wl 

exhibits, p. one to despotic goveru- 
ment aud corruption. Its strength is in the 
combination and organization of ill who profit 
by its oppressions. Being at war with the en- 
nobling principles of humanity, it necessarily 
appeals to the worst instincts and passions for 

it. Where freedom prevails, it can have 
no party on honest principles. There it must 
buy a }>artij. Hence their appeals to the sordid 
of the once patriotic Democracy of the 
free States, successfully holding out to their 
avarice, and ambition, advancement to tho high 
places und patronage of the Government. Tho 
result of their prostitution has been the ruin of 

irty whose name aud organization they 
abused. 



§4 Mf 



